Reservations Manager
Dakota Hotels

Gillian M

00:00:03 My name’s Gillian M and I’m the reservations manager.

00:00:07 My role as reservations manager means I’m responsible for making sure as many of the bedrooms at the hotel are occupied on as many days of the year as possible.

00:00:15 I always wanted to be in hospitality and throughout school and university my part time jobs were always in restaurants or bars and then once I’d finished university I wanted to see a different side of hospitality and move more into a back, back of house role, working more on numbers and figures than working with people face to face.

00:00:41 I studied for three years at Strathclyde University to do a BA, just the standard degree, and it covered aspects of tourism, accounts, food and beverage, there was a restaurant in the hotel school that you had to work in both front of house and in the kitchens. That’s, we spent time doing that.

00:01:05 It was good I wasn’t ready to work after I left school, I needed more time to mature, so, university was ideal for that and I enjoyed the course that I studied.

00:01:16 I went to a private school so, there was a bit more pushiness on a wee bit more pressure to, to do well academically, a wee bit from my parents and, and more so from the teachers and so on, and I was at a school with a lot of, strongly academic people that I’m not the most intelligent myself so I always seemed to be bottom of the class, that’s when, maybe started to, to not like school so much. But it pushed me on because even if I wasn’t bottom of the class, just to be second bottom of the class was an improvement and it gave me something to work towards.

00:01:57 I didn’t get a lot of pressure from my parents I was free to study what I wanted it was more the difficulty was I couldn’t study everything I wanted to because the way the timetables clashed I had to pick between one or the other.

00:02:11 I wanted to study business management but it clashed with economics and because I’d already done two years of economics I thought it made more sense to, to stick with economics than to deviate and go and do something else.

00:02:24 I thought for sure that hospitality was for me when I was sixteen and I’d started my first part time job, and, I liked, I liked what I was doing and, and meeting new people and working in a relaxed atmosphere. As opposed to the work experience I went on at an accountants, put me off that so I needed a new path and I was happy with hospitality I enjoyed it.

00:02:51 It was actually working in McDonalds, fast food chain so it was near, it was close to home because I was still at school and I didn’t drive and I could get away with just working four to eight hours a week just to give me some, some pocket money, at the same time I learnt a lot there as well.

00:03:11 I look back on it and I’m glad that I worked there because it’s such a fast moving environment and I can look back on it now and think I’ve got it easy, cos it was a difficult job.

00:03:23 We had to make our decision on what course we were going to do at university in fourth year at school and I’d only just come back from my work experience and decided I didn’t like hospital.. I didn’t like accountancy and that’s, I jumped ship and went to hospitality. I think you’re forced to make a decision on your career too early on in life.

00:03:41 I’m only twenty two I’m not convinced I’ve found the right career for me yet, there could be other things in store for me. Some days I worry about the career that I’ve chosen, if I could be stuck in this industry now and I’ll speak to my, my parents about it and my dad’ll say, I’m fifty four and I still don’t know what I want to do, so I think there’s plenty of time for me if, if this wasn’t for me to just enjoy it while I’m here and then if I find something else move on later.

00:04:12 END