You are the face of a hotel.
While there might be countless amenities, all the way from spas to business centers, the best way to ensure a pleasant stay at a hotel is to have friendly staff.
When people are weary from traveling, or a long day at an out-of-town work function, they are looking to be taken care of, even if that just means smiling and asking about their trip.
You need to handle their requests and make them feel as comfortable as possible.
It takes someone with great tact and attention to detail to put guests at ease and lay any issues to rest without complaint.
You are the front desk staff of a hotel, and you are ready day and night to assist with an endless array of requests.
If you are willing to do this job, there is just one thing standing in your way — creating the perfect resume.
Let’s get started.
Summary
- Resume Template
- Formatting
- Writing Your Resume Summary
- Areas of Expertise
- Writing Your Work Experience
- Writing Your Education Section
- Additional Sections
- Resume Points to Remember
- Resume “Don’ts” to Remember
- Some Helpful Tools
Let’s begin with a sample hotel front desk hospitality resume to demonstrate how all the resume pieces fit together. Then we will break each section down to really drill into how to write the best hotel front desk hospitality resume you possibly can.
Hotel Front Desk Hospitality Resume (Text Version)
Contact Info:
Lauren Feliz
[email protected]
(813) 576-1478
Tampa FL, 33601
linkedin.com/lfeliz
Summary Statement:
Hotel Front Desk: Friendly and personable customer service professional with expertise in hospitality industries. Demonstrable history of providing exceptional customer service and training to colleagues on the execution of daily business operations and customer retention. Serves as a dynamic team player able to perform in a variety of work environments.
Key Accomplishments/Areas of Expertise
- Customer Service
- Hospitality
- Collaboration
- Organization
- Effective Communication
- Detail-oriented
- Management
- Flexible
- Microsoft Office
- POS System
- Wake-up Calls
- Fluent English/Spanish
- Local Resource Knowledge
Professional Experience:
Drury Inn | Desk Agent
Tampa, FL | September 2014–Present
- Register guests using POS terminal in 150+ room hotel
- Maintain a 97% positive customer review rating
- Coordinate with hotel depts to ensure smooth operations
- Lead and train a team of 5+ staff members on guest services
Holiday Inn | Front Desk Clerk
Tampa, FL | June 2012–September 2014
- Completed room reservations & answered phones for 200+ room hotel
- Resolved customer complaints & had 95% positive reviews
- Used Microsoft Office, POS terminal, & hotel computer daily
Marriott Hotel | Front Desk Reception
Clearwater, FL | May 2011–May 2012
- Managed room reservations and availability for 50+ guests daily
- Communicated with housekeeping to ensure rooms were inviting for guests
- Handled any discrepancies by communicating with staff to resolve issues
Education
High School Diploma
Davis High School, Tampa, FL
June 2010
Formatting
The format of your hospitality resume is like your work attire.
You can say and do all the right things, but if you show up to work in a bathrobe, you won’t be impressing anyone.
Needless to say, your first consideration before you write one bullet point of a resume should always be about how you want your resume to appear visually.
There are many acceptable formats to choose from to create an impressive resume, but there are some consistent “rules” to follow regardless of the format you select.
To start, always use a legible font that is easy to read and won’t slow your readers down.
When setting up bullet points and resume sections, make sure that you are paying attention to the spacing in between.
Allowing for proper spacing will create clean lines to guide eyes down the page.
While these visual details are essential to creating a professional look for your resume, it is also important to pay attention to how the format interacts with the information you are writing.
Listing details in reverse chronological order allows your most recent accomplishments to come first on the page.
Following this order is a good rule of thumb when you consider that most candidates’ work experience and achievements become more impressive over time.
Overall, including the most relevant and impressive information first is imperative to catching a hiring manager’s attention, as they only spend six seconds on average, reviewing each resume they see.
Given the brief amount of time a resume is typically given to shine, formatting is the first aspect of resume writing that can either make or break a job opportunity.
Start With Your Resume Summary
The first section of a resume is a summary.
A resume summary is an opportunity for a candidate to introduce themselves as a candidate and describe the qualifications they possess that benefit their work.
While a resume summary is typically a brief section of a resume (two to three sentences), it can be a challenge to decide what details should be included within it.
Before jumping into this section, try to ask yourself a few questions.
What skills and abilities are important to working the front desk of a hotel properly?
What experience and abilities do I have that could benefit me in this position?
While these questions are simple in nature, they are an excellent way to get the ball rolling, and then narrow details down to what you believe are the most impressive.
Yes!
Hotel Front Desk: Friendly and personable customer service professional with over 9 years of experience in hospitality industries. Demonstrable history of providing exceptional customer service and training to colleagues on the execution of daily business operations and customer retention. Serves as a dynamic team player able to perform in a variety of work environments.
No!
Front desk worker with experience in hotels. History of giving customer service and training to staff members. Always a team player able to perform in all work environments.
The “Yes!” example describes the candidate with a specific and strong variety of keywords and details to show that the candidate is experienced and competent.
The “No!” example describes the candidate with basic diction and minimal descriptors and details, failing to separate the candidate from others.
PRO TIP: If you are struggling to come up with what details to include in your resume summary, try to skip this section and come back to it. Write your skills section and your work history first, to help build a foundation of what details are most important to discuss in a resume.
Key Accomplishments/ Skills & Qualifications
When hiring managers review resumes, they want to be able to see at a glance if a candidate meets the job requirements for the position they are looking to fill.
Meeting the job requirements, for the most part, pertains to having the necessary skills and qualifications to do the job properly.
For this reason, it is necessary to include a section in your hospitality resume that lays out your own skills and qualifications clearly and simply.
Example:
Key Accomplishments/Areas of Expertise
- Customer Service
- Hospitality
- Collaboration
- Organization
- Effective Communication
- Detail-oriented
- Management
- Flexible
- Microsoft Office
- POS System
- Wake-up Calls
- Fluent English/Spanish
- Local Resource Knowledge
When deciding what skills to include in this list, make note that there are two main kinds.
Hard skills:
- Known as technical skills
- Can be taught and practiced
- Quantifiable
- Often job specific
Soft skills:
- Known as people skills
- Not always teachable
- Related to personality traits
- Now easy to quantify
Working in hospitality requires a wide array of soft skills in order to work well with the public.
You need to be able to communicate appropriately with customers and staff and make sure that people feel taken care of.
However, to competently deal with making reservations and assisting customers, you need to be able to have specific expertise about the hotel you work for and the area you work in.
You need to be able to work well on a computer and multitask to input reservations, handle wake-up calls, and deal with any and all requests a customer might have.
A well-rounded and experienced employee should have hard skills and soft skills to complete their tasks and create happy customers.
PRO TIP: When you are writing your own list of skills and qualifications, always reference the job posting you are responding to. Companies will often list the skills they are looking for a candidate to have in order to be considered, so make sure you match up to what they desire.
Writing Your Work Experience
Now that you have described who you are and the various qualifications you have to work the front desk of a hotel, it is important to explain your previous work experience.
Listing your work experience on your hospitality resume is essential to “backing up” the skills and qualifications you claim to have.
If you have a wide range of work experience in the field of hospitality, your biggest concern is to narrow things down to only the most impressive jobs.
When deciding what jobs to include in this section, try to list your experience in reverse chronological order, if possible, while using your best judgment.
If you have a more recent job that has nothing to do with hospitality, and your job before that was working for a hotel, listing the latter is likely more beneficial to your cause.
Once you have decided what jobs to include in your resume, describe each in three to five bullet points.
Discuss the work tasks and accomplishments that most pertain to the job you are applying for.
Yes!
Drury Inn | Desk Agent | Tampa, FL | September 2014–Present
- Register guests using POS terminal in 150+ room hotel
- Maintain a 97% positive customer review rating
- Coordinate with hotel depts to ensure smooth operations
- Lead and train a team of 5+ staff members on guest services
No!
Drury Inn | Desk Agent | Tampa, FL | September 2014–Present
- Welcome and register guests upon arrival to hotel
- Maintain consistent positive customer reviews
- Communicate with various departments of hotel
- Provide leadership to team members and training
The “Yes!” example lists specific information to quantify and qualify the experience and work accomplishments the candidate has achieved.
The “No!” example lists workplace tasks without specific details to describe how the candidate performed or made a positive impact on the business as a whole.
PRO TIP: It is essential to quantify and qualify your job descriptions. Make sure that if you are describing a workplace task or accomplishment, that you give specifics to separate yourself from other candidates. Saying you checked in guests at a 200+ room hotel makes a more significant impact because it shows you can handle a high volume of guests. Saying that you used a POS terminal to check in guests shows off another skill that you have related to hospitality.
(If you lack work experience, see below for a helpful section.)
About Bots
While writing your hospitality resume, take the time to consider who will be reviewing it once you send it in.
Often candidates assume that a manager or owner will be going over their resumes, and while this is true at some point in the hiring process, in today’s job market, there is an extra step to the process.
Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), or bots, are programs designed to review resumes before a hiring manager does.
Bots search resumes for specific keywords associated with desirable candidate options.
When a bot finds a resume that appears to have good candidate potential, it flags it. When it detects a resume that doesn’t seem to have good candidate potential, it passes it up.
Due to the increased use of bots by many companies, some resume writing experts believe that writing job descriptions in paragraphs instead of bullet points promotes the use of more keywords.
However, here at Big Interview, we believe that sticking with bullet points is still the best policy.
Writing job descriptions in bullet points allows resumes to appear more neat, professional, and succinct in wording.
As long as candidates are intentional about including keywords in their descriptions, bullet points will not hinder a resume in impressing a bot.
Standard Bullet Point Format:
Holiday Inn | Front Desk Clerk | Tampa, FL | June 2012–September 2014
- Completed room reservations & answered phones for 200+ room hotel
- Resolved customer complaints & had 95% positive reviews
- Used Microsoft Office, POS terminal, & hotel computer daily
Paragraph Format:
Holiday Inn | Front Desk Clerk | Tampa, FL | June 2012–September 2014
Completed room reservations and responded to questions regarding hotel pricing and amenities over the phone and in-person for 200+ room hotel. Resolved any customer complaints by utilizing effective problem-solving and customer service skills to ensure guest satisfaction and maintain 95% positive reviews. Utilized Microsoft Office, POS terminal, and hotel computer system to process transactions and reservations.
Paragraph Format w/ Bullet Points:
Holiday Inn | Front Desk Clerk | Tampa, FL | June 2012–September 2014
Completed room reservations and responded to questions regarding hotel pricing and amenities over the phone and in-person. Resolved any customer complaints by utilizing effective problem-solving and customer service skills to ensure guest satisfaction. Utilized Microsoft Office, POS terminal, and hotel computer system to process transactions and reservations.
- 95% positive customer reviews
- 200+ room hotel
Writing Your Education Section
Including your education on your hospitality resume, whether or not it pertains to the job, is still a common requirement to work for most companies.
When listing your education experience, include the full title for each degree you have completed, the school you attended, and the year you completed it.
Example:
High School Diploma
Davis High School, Tampa, FL
June 2010
Include any additional certifications or licenses pertaining to hospitality in this section as well.
Example:
Certifications:
Certified Front Desk Representative — AHLEI
Possible Sections to Include
When you have achievements and qualifications that concern hospitality — or the company you are applying to work for — that don’t fit into typical resume sections, you can include additional sections to accommodate those details.
Some additional sections to consider including are:
- Awards and honors
- Publications
- Noteworthy Projects
- Social Media Influence
- Speaking Engagements
- Hobbies/Interests
- Volunteer Work
What if You Have No Experience?
If you are new to the field of hospitality or you haven’t had any previous work experience, making alterations to your hospitality resume is a must.
If you have absolutely no work experience, start by moving your education section below your summary to draw more attention to it.
Your education section should be expanded on in whatever way possible to show off your intelligence and hard work.
If you earned any honor and awards or achieved a high GPA, those details can help improve your education section.
Adding in details about specific coursework or extracurricular activities can improve your education section as well.
Add in any volunteer work or internships that show off skills related to customer service and working with the public.
While these details might not seem like much, if you can expand on the experience you have and gear things toward the hospitality industry, your resume will shine just like the rest.
If you have some work experience, but it is unrelated to hospitality, try to include jobs in your resume that have work tasks related to customer service or front desk work.
If you can write job descriptions that show you have the skills needed to work in hospitality, you can still land an interview.
Resume Points to Remember
Power words and keywords
Power words are action verbs that strengthen specific job tasks and responsibilities you completed in previous jobs. Keywords are unique adjectives used to describe yourself or your work abilities in relation to the job you are trying to obtain. Both word types are essential to creating a resume that is impressive and memorable.
Smooth things over
It is easy to make mistakes, but it is essential to catch them whenever possible. Take the time to read over your resume and revise any errors you find. If you can have a friend review it as well, always utilize a second opinion.
List your information
When listing your name and contact information, always place it at the top of the page in a clearly noticeable location and font size. Sometimes, people get so wrapped up in the more complex aspects of resume writing that they forget the simplest details of all.
Try to Avoid
Repeating yourself
Don’t say the same power words and keywords more than once. Start each bullet point with a new power word and describe a new job task or accomplishment each time. Resumes should be concise, so make sure each line is presenting new information.
Writing two pages
Never write a resume that goes onto a second page. Hiring managers don’t have much time to go over the resume they receive, and they will not be impressed by a resume that rambles on for more than one page.
Flashy fonts and formats
Make sure that you aren’t trying to stand out by selecting a font or format that is overly flashy and distracts from the information. Make sure you let your words speak for themselves.
(See below for a helpful table of some suggested power words.)
Helpful Tools:
Hospitality Resume Power Words
- Administered
- Founded
- Adept
- Formulated
- Built
- Implemented
- Created
- Improved
- Consolidated
- Initiated
- Coordinated
- Launched
- Developed
- Pioneered
- Designed
- Organized
Hospitality Resume Skills List
| Hard Skills | Soft Skills |
| POS System | Organized |
| Microsoft Office | Hospitality |
| Wake-up Calls | Flexible |
| Fluent English and Spanish | Customer Service |
| Local Resource Knowledge | Effective Communication |
