The required talents to be a hotel general manager have dramatically changed. Significant advancements in technology are pushing the entire hospitality industry to keep pace with other Fortune 500 industries. The evolution of the web, sophisticated yield management applications, expensive training initiatives, increased market competition and Wall Street’s short-term perspective are making general managers multi-disciplined. We wanted to know what the typical career paths were to becoming a GM, and which path was the most lucrative. By conducting an informal survey of our clients, we identified four primary career paths to the GM seat: • Finance. • Food and beverage. • Rooms. • Sales and marketing. It appeared that most companies had multiple career paths to becoming a GM, but expressed a preference for one or two. For example, Hilton had a penchant for food & beverage expertise, Marriott was more sales & marketing oriented and Ian Schrager Hotels was rooms-driven. The accompanying table below illustrates the base salary for three positions in each of the four departments. The positions start at the manager level, graduate to the assistant department head and conclude at the department head. We also included the general manager position for comparative purposes. The data was gathered from the 2000 HCE Lodging Property Report, and represents all luxury and first-class hotel properties in the database. The data revealed that there might be a more financially beneficial career path to becoming a general manager. The average salaries of manager-level positions were as follows: • Sales Department, Sales Manager, $38,478.76. • F&B, Restaurant Manager, $35,366.50. • Rooms Division, Assistant Front Office Manager (AFOM), $35,375.00. • Finance, Accounting Manager, $36,754.69. In addition to having the highest median salary, sales managers had the most lucrative average bonus at $3,275.20. Accounting managers had the smallest bonus at a mere $436.95. Restaurant managers and AFOMs were almost identical in both salary and bonus. The following is a list of the Assistant Department Head salaries: • Sales Department, Senior Sales Manager, $47,155.34. • F&B, Asst. Director/Food & Beverage, $49,513.11. • Rooms Division, Front Office Manager, $39,276.27. • Finance, Assistant Controller, $44,595.98. The assistant department head in F&B saw a dramatic jump in median base compensation, which rose more than $14,000 from the manager level. The rooms department head had the smallest increase at nearly $4,000. Sales managers continued to see the most rewarding average bonuses at $4,000, nearly four times that of the other assistant department heads. The department head salaries changed the outlook considerably: • Sales Department, Director/Sales & Marketing, $78,944.17. • F&B, Director/Food and Beverage, $74,269.66. • Rooms Division, Resident Manager, $82,521.84. • Finance, Controller, $64,838.59. At the department head level the most impressive increase in base salary was the resident manager, rising nearly $43,000 from front office manager. The largest bonus was also awarded to the resident manager with $10,944.49 followed by the controller with $8,176.94, director/sales and marketing with $7,923.01 and director/food and beverage with $6,981.15. Requiring prospective general managers to have years of valuable and assorted employment experiences will remain a constant. The path, however, and the accompanying financial rewards may not. Corporate operations managers are now seeking professionals who are leaders, are self-disciplined, have a passion for service and can motivate employees. Manfred Timmel, general manager of the new Ritz-Carlton Downtown in New York is a perfect example of a hotelier who worked hard to complete not only a scholastic education, but who also built a rewarding career. Timmel began his diverse career at the age of 14 as an apprentice in Stuttgart, Germany. He subsequently held about 17 positions,
