Hospitality
Fran Cusworth
She’ll be hauling suitcases this year, but by 2010, Amber Taylor will have worked her way up to front office manager at Como Hotel.
Crystal ball? Good astrologer? Hospitality graduate Taylor has something even better — a career path mapped by employer Mirvac.
Even though Taylor, 21, has started as a porter at the boutique Chapel St hotel, she can shift cars and push luggage trollies secure in the knowledge she won’t be parked in a career siding.
Her path will be via telephone reception, front desk, night duties, training and duty manager, and should take 3 1/2 years.
Taylor has known since she was 15 that she wanted to work in hospitality.
“I love working with people and I love working with food,” she says.
The Como job is Taylor’s first since graduating as dux of her course last year at the private-hospitality college, the Blue Mountains Hotel School.
She lived on campus for the three-year course and loved the international feel of campus life.
“It’s the best fun. You make friends from all over the world and expand your knowledge of other cultures.”
Taylor completed her course on a half scholarship to offset fees. The BMHS degree costs almost $80,000, including food and accommodation.
Subjects include accounting, marketing, serving styles, small business and food and beverage preparation.
Now accredited as a higher-education institution, awards offered by the BMHS include a three-year Bachelor of Commerce degree, a one-year Diploma of Food and Beverage management and a two-year Associate Degree in Hotel and Resort Management.
Como spokeswoman Cleo Seaman says parent group Mirvac has a huge program for progression planning to develop its staff.
“You want an environment where you keep your staff. You can’t put a dollar value on intellectual property,” Seaman says.
“Obviously it’s all performance-based, and it’s not set in stone. But hospitality has traditionally been a transient industry and more and more hotels are looking to employ the sort of people who will be with them in five years or so, and in senior positions,” Seaman says.
