Property leadership
Connects guest journey, departments, facilities, staffing, safety, and commercial decisions.
Focuses on lobby service while rooms, maintenance, or employee issues remain hidden.
Administration, Customer Service & Hospitality
Hotel Manager Job Description
A Hotel Manager leads guest service, rooms operations, people, safety, facilities, suppliers, and commercial performance across a defined property.
Define property, rooms, outlets, brand, ownership, team, resident or on-call expectations, licences, and budget authority.
Candidate-facing template
Edit the description for your organisation
Replace bracketed details, remove anything that is not genuinely required, and obtain the appropriate internal approval before advertising.
Ready-to-edit job description
Copying excludes all recruiter notes below.
Hotel Manager
- Location
- [Location or working arrangement]
- Employment type
- [Full-time, shift or on-call leadership]
- Reports to
- [Regional Director, Owner, or Asset Manager]
About the role
[Hotel name] is seeking a Hotel Manager for [property]. You will lead department managers and daily operations, protect guest and employee safety, resolve significant service issues, oversee rooms and facilities standards, and manage commercial and owner priorities.
What you will be responsible for
- Lead front office, housekeeping, reservations, facilities, security, and other property departments within scope.
- Maintain fire, food, pool, licence, privacy, cash, safeguarding, emergency, and brand controls applicable to the hotel.
- Manage budgets, labour, occupancy, rate, suppliers, maintenance, guest feedback, and improvement plans.
What success looks like
- Guests receive consistent service and clear recovery when the property falls short.
- The property’s people, facilities, safety, and commercial risks have current action and ownership.
Essential qualifications
- Hotel or accommodation leadership in a comparable property, service, and team environment.
- Strong guest, people, rooms, facilities, safety, revenue, supplier, and budget skills.
- Ability to lead emergencies, complaints, peaks, and out-of-hours decisions calmly.
Preferred qualifications
- Experience with [brand, property type, food and beverage, spa, events, or opening].
- Relevant hospitality, hotel, revenue, food-safety, licensing, or management qualification.
Tools and working knowledge
- Property management, reservations, channel, and revenue systems
- Point-of-sale, housekeeping, maintenance, access, and guest-feedback tools
- Scheduling, payroll, procurement, incident, and reporting platforms
Compensation: [Add approved range, currency, bonus, service charge, accommodation if any, on-call, meals, and benefits.]
[Hotel name] will assess essential property functions individually and discuss reasonable adjustments.
How to apply
Apply through [method] with a property, guest, people, safety, or commercial improvement example.
Performance expectations
What good performance looks like
Use these outcomes to replace vague activity lists with the evidence the hiring manager expects to see after the person joins.
Department plans align occupancy, events, staffing, rooms, maintenance, and guest needs.
Guest feedback and operational incidents produce verified property improvements.
Hiring-manager intake
Questions to settle before advertising
Record specific answers so sourcing, screening, and interview decisions use the same definition of the role.
- 1
What property, rooms, outlets, facilities, brand, ownership, team, and operating hours apply?
- 2
Which budget, hiring, pricing, compensation, supplier, safety, licence, and emergency authority is included?
- 3
What resident, duty-manager, overnight, weekend, holiday, travel, and contactability expectations apply?
Evaluation criteria
Evidence to use in a Hotel Manager scorecard
Agree the criteria before interviews begin, then score examples against the same evidence standard.
Guest recovery
Protects safety, listens, verifies, acts within authority, communicates, and addresses cause.
Uses compensation as the only recovery tool or blames a department publicly.
Structured interview
Hotel Manager interview questions and strong signals
Ask the same core questions in the same order, then use follow-ups to understand the candidate’s individual contribution.
1
Tell me about a high-occupancy day with a serious property problem.
Strong answer signal
Shows safety, continuity, guest communication, department coordination, authority, and review.
2
How have you improved revenue without weakening guest experience?
Strong answer signal
Uses segment, demand, rate, channel, package, staffing, service, and feedback evidence.
Related titles
Check the scope behind the title
Hotel General Manager — generally the senior property leader with full operational and commercial authority.
Lodging Manager — common general title for accommodation operations in some markets.
Common hiring mistakes
Problems to remove before publishing
Using Hotel Manager without property scale, rooms, outlets, and authority.
Hiding resident, overnight, on-call, holiday, and emergency expectations.
Continue the hiring workflow
Related roles and recruiter resources
Related job descriptions
Helpful recruiter resources
Source and review notes
How this template was prepared
- Language
- International English
- Prepared by
- ATZ CRM Editorial Team
- Review
- ATZ CRM Recruitment Editorial Review
- Last reviewed
- 2026-08-05
O*NET: Lodging Managers
Reference for occupation tasks, knowledge, skills, abilities, and work activities.
ESCO: occupations and skills
Reference for internationally recognised occupation and skills terminology.
Qualifications, compensation, licences, working conditions, and equal-opportunity wording must be checked for the role and location before use.
Recruiter questions
Hotel Manager job description FAQs
What should a Hotel Manager job description include?
State property, rooms, outlets, departments, team, brand, budget, licences, safety, shifts, on-call, accommodation, and commercial authority.
Should a Hotel Manager live on site?
Only where genuinely required. State accommodation, privacy, duty expectations, utilities, deductions, family or pet conditions, and termination terms clearly.