Hotel Manager CV Examples & Writing Guide

A fictional general manager. Every job line names the property size and service level first, because that is how hotel people place a candidate. The bullets carry the four numbers owners care about: revenue, profit, guest scores and staff turnover.

Hotels run on a short list of measures, and owners read a CV looking for them. Use the ones you genuinely owned, with the period and the starting point.

• RevPAR and RevPAR index. Revenue per available room, and how you performed against the competitive set. An index moving from 94 to 112 is the single most persuasive line you can write.
• ADR and occupancy. Always give both, because raising one at the cost of the other is not an achievement. Add market context if supply or demand shifted.
• Gross operating profit, GOPPAR or flow-through. This is what an owner is paid on, and few candidates mention it.
• Guest satisfaction and reviews. The brand's guest score, the online review average, and the number of reviews behind it.
• Brand quality assurance audit scores, if you are at a franchised property. Coming off a corrective action plan is a strong story.
• Labour as a percentage of revenue, minutes per room in housekeeping, and staff turnover. Staffing is the operational problem of the decade and managers who fixed it get calls.
• Scale facts: room count, employees, budget size, food and beverage outlets, meeting space size, and whether you handled a refurbishment or a brand conversion.

“Room count, service level and a RevPAR index. If those three are in the first four lines, I keep reading. What I do not need is a paragraph about delivering exceptional guest experiences; every hotel manager says that.”

Four lines at most. Property type and size, one revenue number, one profit or guest number, and your professional membership or qualification. Use a career objective only when you are moving up or moving segment.

The typical hotel CV lists responsibilities that come with the title. Replace each one with a decision you made and what happened to the number.

Two blocks work better than one long list: what you manage, and what you manage it with. Naming the property management system is close to mandatory now, because it decides how long your onboarding takes.

• Commercial: rate strategy and revenue management, forecasting, budget building, channel and OTA contract management, direct booking growth, group and event sales, month-end close and owner reporting.
• Rooms: front office operations, night audit oversight, housekeeping standards and minutes per room, inspection routines, planned preventive maintenance, out-of-order room control, loyalty programme enrolment.
• Food and beverage, where the property has it: breakfast operations, restaurant and bar oversight, banqueting, food and drink cost control, food hygiene compliance and the hotel's food hygiene rating (FHRS).
• People: recruiting at volume, rotas to a labour standard, cross-training, disciplinary and grievance procedures in line with the Acas code, retention programmes, working with a recognised trade union where there is one.
• Compliance and safety: accessibility and reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010, fire risk assessment and fire safety systems, food safety, the premises licence and Challenge 25, pool and spa rules where they apply, incident reporting.
• Systems: Opera and Opera Cloud, Mews, Cloudbeds or StayNTouch for the PMS; IDeaS or Duetto for revenue; Delphi or a similar sales and catering system; HotSOS or Quore for maintenance; Medallia or Revinate for guest feedback; a rota tool such as Fourth, Planday or Rotaready.

Hotel management has no licence of its own, so qualifications work as proof of seriousness rather than as a gate. The exception is alcohol: a licensed hotel needs a designated premises supervisor (DPS) with a personal licence. Use the exact names of what you hold.

• Institute of Hospitality: the UK professional body for hospitality managers. Membership signals commitment rather than a licence to practise; give your membership grade exactly as it appears on your certificate.
• AHLEI certifications such as the Certified Hotel Administrator (CHA), Certified Hospitality Revenue Manager (CHRM) and Certified Rooms Division Executive (CRDE) are American credentials, best known at US brands and international management companies. List them with the issuing body if you hold them.
• A Level 3 hospitality supervision qualification or apprenticeship if you are earlier in your career and moving towards management.
• A Level 3 food safety certificate if your property serves food, plus a personal licence (the Level 2 Award for Personal Licence Holders) if you are, or will be, the DPS on the hotel's premises licence.
• Brand training: franchised properties run their own general manager certification and brand standard programmes. Name the programme and the year without turning your CV into a brand advertisement.
• Degrees: a hospitality management degree or HND helps early and matters less after ten years. List it in one line below experience once you have property results to lead with.
• Licensing, food hygiene and pool safety are enforced locally by councils, and Scotland has its own licensing law, so check what applies where the hotel is rather than assuming your last certificates carry over.

One page for a department head or assistant manager if it fits, two for a general manager with several properties behind you. Reverse chronological. In the UK no photo, no date of birth, no marital status, whatever the format your training used elsewhere.

• Send a PDF unless the advert asks for a Word file. Management companies run applicant tracking systems, so keep one column, standard headings and no tables.
• Mirror the advert's language: general manager, rooms division, RevPAR, ADR, occupancy, GOP, P&L, forecasting, brand standards, quality assurance, guest satisfaction, service recovery, PMS, revenue management, group sales.
• Add a short "Properties managed" line if you have run several: room count, service level, brand or independent, and years. Regional directors read this first.
• Say what segment you want. Select service, full service, extended stay, resort, boutique and budget hotels are different jobs with different skill sets, and applying to all of them with one generic CV shows.
• Note willingness to relocate and any market knowledge. Hotel management jobs are geographically specific and this decides many callbacks.

If you trained or worked outside the UK, keep the achievements and convert the conventions. Translate the property scale into rooms and pounds, drop personal details that UK employers do not expect, and state your right to work in the UK plainly rather than leaving a recruiter to guess.