If you are writing your matric exams this year, you already know the question everyone keeps asking. What are you doing next year? For a lot of matriculants, that question weighs heavy on their heart because there might not be a next step yet. If hospitality has never crossed your mind as an answer, I implore you to consider this sector.
I have spent over two decades building a career in hospitality. In a nutshell, I started in front office and rooms division, and years later moved into learning and development, a role I am still very much relishing today. You do not need a plan to get into this industry, but what you do need is grit, and the willingness to work your way from the ground up. In the properties I have worked in, I have watched people walk through the door with no experience and no degree, and years later go on to manage the whole operation.
That is not true for everyone, and it rarely happens quickly. It took most of them years of showing up, taking correction well, and learning from every mistake, in essence, what we in the industry like to call experience. All of them started the same way, willing to work from day one. That is what building future leaders means in this industry, years of the right attitude, and no shortcuts.
No qualification I have ever seen teaches you to read a guest before they have said a word, or to know from the way somebody is standing at the front desk that they are having the worst day of their trip. Unfortunately, nobody hands you a textbook for that, however you learn from it by doing it, shift after shift, guest after guest, mistake after mistake, until it becomes instinct. Communication, body language, and patience under pressure is learned on the floor, day after day.
The good news is that this floor stretches further than most people expect. I have watched a driver in our group grow into a corporate sales manager, and a former receptionist become a marketing assistant. The hospitality industry rewards intellect and willingness to learn, not just where you happened to start. None of these paths are separate ladders, they are entry points into the same building, and how far you climb from there depends entirely on you.
This is where learning and skills development actually happens, not necessarily in a classroom. Every department teaches something specific nobody puts in a brochure, but the skills you learn are invaluable. Within food and beverage, you learn forecasting, ordering stock based on what actually sold rather than what you assumed would sell, building supplier relationships, and how quotes and invoices run.
Housekeeping is one of the most underrated departments in any hotel. A trained eye for exceptional cleanliness ensuring nothing stays behind from a previous guest’s visit, like a hair on the pillow, a smear on the mirror, or a glass left behind. Exact inventory control, speed under pressure, stripping and resetting an entire floor of rooms within a fixed changeover window. Here, you get to know absolutely every nook and cranny of a property and most general managers will laud time spent in this department for giving them unparalleled knowledge of a property.
Reservations and group quoting teach you to interpret a rate sheet at lightning speed, and structure a quote for a hundred delegates without a single error. These skills are merely a drop in the ocean, but each and every one of them can move you somewhere else in the business or in the industry.
Before the year ends, apply for an entry-level role somewhere in this industry, like a waiter at a coffee shop, a cashier at a biltong stand, a packer at a popular padstal. Learn the business from the ground and work your way up. None of these ask for a certificate. If a paid role is not available yet, ask a property near you for the chance to job shadow instead. It costs a business nothing but time, and it still gets you in the door.
If you are staring down exams without a plan for what comes next, hospitality could be your answer. All it asks of you is a willingness to work hard and from there, an entire career can open up in front of you. That is how we build future leaders in this industry, not with a plan you arrive with, but with the attitude you bring on day one. Once you are in, and that attitude has shown itself, the courses and mentors that sharpen your skills further are ours to provide. There is so much room to grow in an industry that wants nothing more than to grow, and create, its future leaders.
