The hospitality industry covers a wide array of jobs, ranging from a hospitality manager to working a hotel front desk and janitorial work, too. The core of hospitality jobs is to do what is necessary to make your customers’ lives easier. In the United States, there is an outstanding amount of hotels and motels looking to hire qualified job seekers. Hospitality jobs are also found in the food service industry, including bars, taverns, restaurants and travel agencies. If you’re planning to apply for a job in any of these areas, you need to know how to present your customer service skills, communication skills and teamwork skills in the best possible light. It’s always best to refer to a hospitality cover letter example to build your own cover letter.
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The salutation is the very first element you’ll usually see in a cover letter. Address the cover letter to the hiring manager directly. Instead of using general cover letter phrases like, “To Whom It May Concern” or “Dear Hiring Manager,” you should do your best to address the hiring manager by name. This makes it clear that you care about presenting yourself well for a new job, and can be an important part of writing the perfect cover letter.
Also, don't forget to include a clear and relevant subject line when you attach your cover letter to an email! Interested in learning more about the topic? Explore our cover letter email page!
The first paragraph is where you convince the hiring manager to keep reading the cover letter. You should do your best to make the very first sentence as engaging as possible. While a generic phrase like, “My name is John Smith, and I am pleased to apply for the hotel management position” is a fine starting sentence, it doesn’t stand out very much. A hiring manager who has already read 40 cover letters for the same job, all using this cover letter format, won’t be interested in reading much further. In the example, the applicant immediately mentions possessing more than 20 years of experience.
The second paragraph is where you get to flex your customer service skills. Although many hospitality skills are soft skills, you should still do your best to reference hard metrics in this paragraph to showcase the benefits you can provide a company. This applicant indicates an average increase in customer satisfaction of 21% and the fact that his largest client had a 43% increase.
In the final paragraph, you should summarize what makes you the right person for this job, then finish with a call to action as your sign-off. Politely request a job interview. This applicant states, “Let me know when we can sit down together,” which is an excellent example of closing your cover letter.
It’s always a good idea to use a cover letter for your job application, even if the job posting itself doesn’t state that it’s necessary. A cover letter shows that you care about getting the job enough to make the extra effort to write a cover letter. It also gives you the ability to talk about what draws you to guest service in the first place. You can use the ResumeNerd cover letter builder to create yours and find other cover letter samples.
Generally, the best cover letter is between half a page and three-quarters of a page long. This is approximately 250-350 words. This gives you enough space to talk about all the important elements of your cover letter without boring a recruiter or making them want to skip over the cover letter entirely. This length is perfect, and most cover letter tips will recommend staying around this length.
Hospitality is one of the industries where beginners are most easily welcomed, and you don’t necessarily need years of experience to work in the hospitality field. If you don’t have a lot of experience in the hospitality industry, focus on your skill set instead. You can also include experience in related fields. For example, you could discuss your experience as a general manager when you’re applying to be a hotel manager, or mention your experience in human resources when you’re planning to be a front desk clerk.
