From Room Attendant to Housekeeping Supervisor

I am one of the housekeeping supervisors at Heritage Hotel Queenstown. My main responsibilities are to make sure that rooms are up to hotel standards and to oversee the housekeeping team.

You get to meet so many different people from different cultures and to learn from them. Plus, it’s such a broad industry you’ll always find something that interests you.

I always knew I wanted to travel and do something in tourism, so after high school I studied Hospitality Management at Queenstown Resort College. For the course, we had to do mock interviews and I had mine here at Heritage Hotel Queenstown, and I was then offered a job! We had to do internships anyway, so I accepted. Back then I was shy, I didn’t want to do a front-desk role, so I think it was good that I did housekeeping as it helped me gain confidence. I made my way up from room attendant, to self checker, to supervisor.

There’s a lot more leadership and responsibility as a supervisor; and our team is really close, so you’ll always have a laugh even on the busiest of days.

The first thing we do is a morning briefing and split the rooms amongst teams to be cleaned. Then, throughout the day we’re checking on the rooms, checking on maintenance issues, and working with reception on the status of the rooms and what else is going on in the hotel.

Personally, I’ve met most of my best friends in tourism. Career-wise, I’ve been able to progress and achieve my goals, which has built up my confidence. I’ve also won a couple of internal employee awards, which made me feel really appreciated.

My goal is to get into events and I’m currently studying an events management course. Working at Heritage has given me a lot of opportunities to progress and learn the skills I need to move forward. I basically just hope to keep progressing.

There are so many opportunities in tourism and hospitality, but it is a quite high-pressure industry so you need to be prepared to work hard and go the extra mile. For housekeeping, you need to be detailed and be ready to run, because it is a fast-paced and physical job.

It’s very fast-paced and it can be a bit stressful some days, but I personally find cleaning to be quite calming.