Essay Sample: Hospitality Industry Placement

Hospitality is a form of business that is rapidly developing and is highly competitive. Therefore, when it comes to hotel management, it is quite necessary for them to comprehend the need for proper market research and to get to know the strengths and weaknesses that are involved allowing them to face the competition that arises. In this context, therefore, my primary focus will be on industrial placement reflection that will help illustrate how industry placement aid in the process of learning for the students.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Firstly, it creates room for the students to know how various businesses are run to be productive and successful (Ahmed, Zairi & Almarri, 2006, p.166). For instance, in the case of a hotel, there are a lot of businesses involved in hotel management. Through the industrial placement, I was able to learn the need for the industry to perform thorough market research. One of the importance was to identify the strength and weaknesses of the businesses that help the management face the competition that might come their way. Apart from that, it also allows the people to identify different ways through which the business may shift depending on the trends of the market. Through this, the company can make profits and counter their losses well making the business successful.

Apart from that, they help in instilling experience in the students, which makes them useful when they are officially employed. That is, one can identify various problems that may face the business which might end up crippling it. For instance, my stay at JWTW, I was able to identify some of the challenges that may hit the hotel (Hung, 2013, p.88). The hotel was located in a small city called Jilin that was made of the low population making the level of consumption low. That hotel was a five-star making its price slightly higher compared to the overall population of the place due to weak buying power. This allowed me to notice that the hotel was mainly favorable for the local community. As the local market is limited and poor tourist attraction, this would result in the hotel focusing on the traveling business, which may also be influenced by the economy of the local area. That is if the economy is booming there will be a lot of people coming in to invest in the are but if the economy is low, the hotel may end up losing consumers as there will be no investors in the area.

Another thing is that industrial placement helps students to be familiar with their field of expertise. That is the student is exposed to long hours in the environment of the work he or she will be doing in the coming years. This helps in making him or her familiar with various aspects of work, which will help in speeding up their work rate when they are officially employed. Like the case of JWTW, I got to go through the background of the business since when it was started. This helped create room to see its achievement and also some of its downfalls (Timothy & Teye, 2009). For instance, it was a world-winning hotel, which meant if I were to be employed by the hotel, my main agenda would be to be the hotel at its competitive state. This would ensure that it went on winning the awards and satisfying its consumers. Apart from that, it also allowed me to learn on various limitations that led or hindered the business from achieving its best. One of the weakness was the low population of the area the company was located. For it to go on being successful, this means that it would lower some of its services to meet the needs of everybody, which means it would be different housing people with financial capabilities that differ.

On the other hand, industrial placement helps students adapt to the working environment and how to communicate with different workmates in the office of different level. That is, one is taught on how to follow instructions and protocol from above as instructed by an individual above his or her rank. This helps in making the following instructions easy and adhering to the working rules when employed. Apart from that, the chance of one getting the job is easy due to the experience that he or she had acquired the internship. In my case example, in JWTW, I was exposed to different accounts of the hotel, which allowed me to know various ways through which the hotel acquired its income. A good example is the money that they charged from the parking of visitor's vehicles. This gave me room to identify several other areas through which the business would be able to make a profit and attract several various consumers.

Therefore, from what I have learned, for one to be successful when employed and perform effectively, he or she needs to take an industrial placement that enables him or her to be familiar with his field of work.

References

Ahmed, A. Zairi, M., and Almarri, K.S. 2006. SWOT analysis for Air China's performance and its experience with quality. Benchmarking: An International Journal, vol. 13, no.2, pp. 160- 173.

Hung, K. 2013. Understanding China' s Hotel Industry: A SWOT Analysis. Journal of China Tourism Research, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 81-93. Timothy, D., and Teye, V. (2009). Tourism and the lodging sector. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.