General Manager
Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG Crowne Plaza)

Jane G

0.00.00 My name is Jane G. I’m General Manager at the Holiday Inn and Hotel in Guilford. And my job is really responsibility for the running of the hotel. I’m responsible for the staff that work there, for the guests that come to stay and obviously responsible to ensure that I meet various targets throughout the year. It’s important that guests have a good stay at the hotel and they have an enjoyable stay and they come back to the hotel.

0.00.30 So I have a responsibility to ensure that happens. It’s also important that my staff are happy and that they’re motivated in their jobs and that they enjoy what they do, because if they’re happy then they’ll provide a good service to our guests. My first position in the industry was actually when I was at college, I studied in HND in hotel management and I did a six month placement, work placement in Switzerland.

0.01.00 It was lovely. The college has some great contacts abroad so I was lucky enough to go to Switzerland with a friend. And we worked in a very lovely hotel on the Lake of Lausanne in Switzerland. And then when I graduated from college I then went to London and I joined Rank Hotels on their management graduate programme, which is a two year training programme, which was great. So I got to get to work and I worked in every department in the hotel so I cleaned bedrooms, I cooked in the kitchen,

0.01.30 worked at reception, checked guests in, checked guests out of the hotel, so I worked in all the different departments to get a really good grounding and understanding of the hotel before I then sort of progressed at the management route. I think I just like the sound of the job and what it entailed and I think it is and it sounded at the time very sort of diverse and very varied and there’s lots of different departments that make up a hotel. It’s not like working in an office.

0.02.00 It’s quite varied really and yeah, it wasn’t as if we had family that worked in hotels or as children we didn’t particularly stay in hotels. My father is retired now but he was a Vicar so I was brought up in a vicarage when I was young and my mother didn’t really work. She was a housewife. I think my parents were always a bit sort of unsure or confused as to why I decided on this career path but they were great, they supported me and as I said obviously I sort of saw it through and started work full-time when I was 21 after I’d graduated.

0.02.30 Being General Manager as I am today, I mean that, I took my first general management position in 2001 at the Holiday Inn in Farnborough in Hampshire and I just thought gosh, you know, I’ve worked all these years to be General Manager and here I am, you know, sort of walking in on that first day. It was great, you know. And, yes, so really I remember that. It probably quite a significant point for me really.

0.03.00 I worked, I mean at the moment I sort of tend to work more Monday to Friday. I don’t have to work many weekends at the moment. I will go in on some weekends if there was something particular special happening at the hotel. During my career I have obviously worked weekends and had days off in the week or worked an early shift or worked a late shift, so you have to sort of manage that around your family. But yes, I mean it’s worked okay.

0.03.30 Work wise, I love working in hotels. I mean the next step could be obviously for me would be to work in a larger hotel as General Manager which I would like to do in a couple of years. I could then go onto maybe more of a regional role but I think I might miss actually being within a hotel. So I don’t really at this point have ambition to get into that sort of position or to go further really. I’m happy as a General Manager but certainly I would enjoy the challenge of a larger hotel.

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