Careers.

The eighty hoteliers and chefs I interviewed for my books hold the jobs people in this industry work toward: general manager of a Four Seasons or a Mandarin Oriental, chef of a three star kitchen, head of a group. Almost none of them began anywhere near those jobs. They started at the front desk, in stewarding, on a hotel school placement, or as a commis in someone else’s kitchen, and the interviews are unusually frank about how the climb actually went.

These four pages put that account next to the practical facts a person needs when deciding where to start. The career ladder sets out every rung in a hotel and in a kitchen, what each job is, and how the people in the book moved between them. The page on management training programs describes the structured entry routes the luxury groups run for graduates and early career managers, and what the interviews say about arriving through one. The page on where the jobs are posted lists the career sites, boards and associations worth checking, and nothing else. The last page is on what makes a luxury hospitality career different: what separates a career at this end of the industry from the rest of it, which brands and groups the people in the book worked for, and what general managers and chefs say they look for when they hire.

Nothing on these pages gives salaries, placement figures or application dates. Those change too often to be trusted on a page like this, and the career sites linked here carry them.

If you are a student, the For Students page gathers the questions on whether this is the work for you, and the Roles section explains what each job involves at the highest level.