Career Insight: Hospitality Management

Hospitality management careers are exciting, fast-paced and have a variety of paths. Many hospitality management jobs involve traveling, anticipating customer needs, entertainment, as well as juggling every detail of an event, the customer experience and facility operations. Few of these jobs are 8 – 5; the hours are long and the work week is rarely limited to weekdays. However, hospitality managers enjoy many employee benefits during time off, like travel, lodging and meals at extremely discounted prices.

One area in this industry that is expanding is meeting, convention and event planning.

“Applicants for our scholarship program for event services has grown from a handful a few years ago to a huge number every year,” said Julie Pingston, President of the Event Service Professional Association.

“A bachelor’s degree in hospitality management is becoming required for jobs more and more, but people can also transfer in from other fields,” she said. With that, the pay has also risen. Larger organizations have more positions that offer opportunities to grow from [frontline management] to middle management and even executive level,” she said.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual salary for meeting, convention and event planners was