Hotel Receptionist CV Examples & Writing Guide

In UK hotels the job is usually advertised as hotel receptionist, front of house receptionist or guest services agent; front desk agent is the usual US term. This sample is for a receptionist with seven years in Birmingham hotels, from a 90-room boutique hotel to a 320-room conference hotel where he now supervises the late shift. The name and hotels are made up.

Reception hiring is usually done by the front office manager or deputy general manager, often within days because the desk cannot run short. They read for four things.

• Which PMS have you used? Opera (the most common in branded full-service hotels), the brand's own system in limited-service and budget hotels, or Mews, Guestline, Protel, Cloudbeds or similar in independents. Training a new receptionist on a PMS takes two to three weeks; knowing theirs moves you to the top of the pile.
• Which shifts, and can you do night audit? A candidate who has closed the books overnight is worth more, because nights are the hardest desk shift to fill. Say which shifts you have worked (early, late, night) and which you are open to, including weekends and bank holidays.
• Hotel size and type. A 90-room boutique desk and a 600-room conference desk are different jobs. State the room count, the star rating if the hotel has one (AA or VisitEngland), and whether it was full-service, limited-service, aparthotel, resort, country house or independent.
• Numbers the manager is measured on: guest satisfaction or arrival scores, loyalty sign-ups, upsell revenue, float accuracy. If your CV has two of these, you look like someone who understands the business.

“I look for the PMS first, then whether they can work nights and weekends. After that I want to see enrolments and upsells, because those are the numbers my GM asks me about every Monday. A CV that says "greeted guests warmly" and stops there tells me nothing.”

Use a personal statement if you have worked a hotel desk before: hotel type and size, years, PMS, two numbers and your shift availability. Use a career objective if you are new to hotels and need to say what you bring and what you want. Three lines either way.

Adverts list duties; your CV should show results. Take each duty you performed and add the system, the volume and the outcome. Common rewrites:

List 10 to 14 skills. Systems first, because that is what the manager searches for; then desk operations, then money and compliance, then languages. Soft skills belong in your bullets, not in a list.

Systems and tools (name exactly what you have used):

• Property management systems: Oracle Hospitality Opera (PMS and Opera Cloud), brand systems used by the major hotel groups, Mews, Guestline, Protel, Cloudbeds
• Reservation and distribution tools: central reservation systems, OTA extranets (Expedia Partner Central, Booking.com), channel managers
• Guest messaging and request platforms, key card encoding systems, switchboard (PBX) phone systems
• EPOS for the lobby shop or grab-and-go, and Microsoft Outlook, Word and Excel

Desk operations and service:

• Check-in and check-out, room allocation and blocking, group arrivals and rooming lists, early arrivals and late departures
• Upselling upgrades and packages, loyalty programme sign-ups and member recognition
• Night audit: room charge posting, folio balancing, card reconciliation, no-show processing, daily reports
• Service recovery and complaint handling, overbooking and walked guests, lost property, concierge basics (directions, dining, transport)
• Cash handling, card pre-authorisations, PCI DSS compliance, safe drops, petty cash
• Emergency procedures: fire alarm and evacuation, medical calls, key control, guest data protection (UK GDPR)

Languages are a real hiring factor in London, airport hotels and tourist areas. State each language and your level (conversational, fluent, native). Spanish, French, Italian, German, Arabic and Mandarin are often asked for in UK hotel adverts.

No licence or qualification is required to work on a hotel reception desk in the UK. Most adverts ask for GCSEs in English and maths, or just good English and customer service experience. A few qualifications do help, and the education section should never be empty.

• A hospitality or customer service qualification, such as a Level 2 Certificate in Customer Service or a Level 2 or 3 hospitality apprenticeship (for example the Hospitality Team Member or Hospitality Supervisor standards). List it with the provider and year.
• Brand service training you completed (each major hotel group has its own programme). List the programme name as it appears on your certificate, with the brand and year.
• Emergency First Aid at Work (one day) from an approved provider. Useful because the night receptionist is often the only member of staff on duty. It lasts three years, so give the year you renewed it.
• Hospitality degrees: a foundation degree or BA (Hons) in hospitality management is a plus for supervisor and management-track roles but is not required for the desk. List it with university and year. Any other degree in one line.
• Licensing training (Challenge 25 and responsible alcohol sales) only if the desk also serves a lobby bar or evening drinks.

Hotel receptionist is one of the most common ways into hotels, and most adverts ask only for good English, customer service experience, the ability to stand for a shift and to work weekends. Your CV needs to prove that you can handle a queue of people politely, handle money accurately, learn a computer system fast and turn up for the shifts nobody wants.

1. 1Put "Hotel Receptionist" (or the advert's title) under your name, not "Cashier" or "Student".
2. 2Write a two-line career objective with your customer-facing experience, your cash-handling record, your language skills and the shifts you can work.
3. 3Pull hotel-like tasks from any job: retail checkout, restaurant host stand, call centre, receptionist, bank cashier, theme park or event admissions. Give each a number: customers per shift, till accuracy, calls per hour, satisfaction scores.
4. 4Show you learn systems: name the EPOS, booking, rota or CRM software you have used. A manager reads that as "will pick up our PMS in a week".
5. 5Add a short skills list: customer service, cash handling, telephone manner, Microsoft Office, conflict resolution, any language.
6. 6State your availability plainly: "Available all shifts including nights, weekends and bank holidays." Night availability alone gets first-time applicants interviews.
7. 7One page, no photo, PDF. If you can, complete a short customer service or hospitality course (many are free online) before you apply, and list it.

• One page. Front office managers read CVs between check-ins.
• Order: header with target title, personal statement or career objective, skills (systems first), experience, qualifications, education. Systems go high because the PMS is a screening question.
• For each hotel give the room count, type (full-service, limited-service, resort, boutique, aparthotel) and whether it was part of a brand or independent. Managers place you instantly from that line.
• Say which shifts you worked and which you are open to. Include an availability line if you can do nights, weekends or bank holidays.
• Single-column, plain layout like the cvplex receptionist template; no photo, no icons, no columns. Hotel groups run CVs through applicant tracking systems.
• Show progression inside one hotel (receptionist to supervisor) as two entries under the same employer with dates for each.
• PDF unless the application asks for Word; name it Firstname-Lastname-Hotel-Receptionist-CV.pdf.

Words to mirror from the advert when they are true for you: hotel receptionist, front of house, guest services, check-in, check-out, property management system (and the named PMS), night audit, loyalty programme, upselling, guest satisfaction, service recovery, cash handling, PCI DSS, reservations, group arrivals, room allocation, housekeeping liaison, telephone manner, brand standards, bilingual, nights, weekends, bank holidays.