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It All Started with Ice Cream

“My parents used to have an ice cream shop in Munich, and this is
where it all started. I would come home after school and clean the
dishes or make ice cream. . . . Then at 16 I got an internship with
Hilton International. . . . I always focused on food and beverage—
my dream was to become a maître d—and then when I was a
restaurant manager my dream was to become a director of food
and beverage. . . . I think once I exhausted that journey in hotels, it
was about how much more creativity and input I could give.”

—Christian Zandonella, general manager of the Ritz-Carlton in Vienna, Austria

Quoted in Steven Bond, “Interview: Christian Zandonella, General Manager of the Ritz-
Carlton, Vienna,” Destination of the World News, September 6, 2017. www.dotwnews.com.

Education and Training

Many hospitality managers have bachelor’s degrees in hotel or hos-
pitality management, culinary management, marketing, business,
or another discipline. Earning a college degree can give aspiring
hospitality managers an edge over those with lesser degrees or
those who did not attend college. Yet in the hospitality industry, on-
the-job experience is sometimes valued as much as or even more
than a college education. Many hospitality managers started out
in lower-level positions and then worked their way up the ladder.
Through this experience, they developed a keen understanding of
the various hotel jobs by experiencing them fi rsthand.
This was the case with Ben Booker, who is now general man-
ager of Ashdown Park Hotel & Country Club in East Sussex, Unit-
ed Kingdom. After leaving high school, Booker worked in jobs at
several different hotels in the United Kingdom. He held positions in
housekeeping and room service and eventually became a doorman.
Over the following years he worked his way up to food and beverage
manager at one hotel and then accepted a position of deputy man-
ager at a different hotel. In 2007 he became the general manager at
Ashdown Park. “Through hard work and passion,” says Booker, “I
have worked my way up to manage a four-star, luxury hotel.” 11

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