Quality Hotel Aalborg

- Front Office Manager Susanne Andreasen

 

Quality Hotel Aalborg

With 168 rooms and a breakfast restaurant, Quality Hotel Aalborg is a 4 star hotel in the centre of Aalborg. The hotel works closely with Aalborg Congress & Culture Centre situated in the same building.

 

Impression of the study programme

Several times, Susanne Andreasen has hired graduated Service, Hospitality & Tourism Management students to work full time at the reception desk. She has also had several students of Hospitality, Service and Tourism Management on 3-month internships.

 

On this background she has gained knowledge about the study programme and her impression is that both interns and permanent staff are all passionate about the hotel business, very willing to learn and they know their abilities.

 

The first intern was hired on a permanent basis

Like many of the following interns, her first intern was hired on a permanent basis after she had graduated from the programme the year after the internship. After that, she worked for a year and a half in the reception area at Quality Hotel Aalborg. Then she went to Copenhagen looking for new challenges. Today that girl is a Front Office Manager and that is why Susanne Andreasen believes that students of Service, Hospitality & Tourism Management can get far if they want to and have the skills needed.

 

On this background Susanne Andreasen thinks that the Service, Hospitality & Tourism Management is a good study programme and that the programme matches the demands of the hotel very well.

 

The Front Office Manager thinks that the four interns that the hotel has had have been “super effective” and they have been people who wanted to learn. All the interns had the specialisation of Hotel and Restaurant Management and Susanne Andreasen thinks that “…it has been really, really good”.

 

Recommendation

That is why she would also highly recommend other companies to take a student of Service, Hospitality & Tourism Management as an intern. On the one hand the hotel helps the student with his or her education and on the other the hotel also helps itself; “They can provide us with new ideas and thoughts and open our eyes to what we do.”

 

The internship is 3 months long and Susanne Andreasen thinks that is an appropriate duration for both parties to profit from it.

 

Internship tasks

Susanne Andreasen tells us that the interns have completed many different assignments. The last intern worked in all departments of the hotel. First she worked as a receptionist and was in charge of all correspondence, oral as well as written, and serving guests.

 

After that, she followed the cleaning supervisor around for a short period to focus on internal communication and co-operation between cleaning and reception staff.

 

The intern even visited the accounting department and finally she followed the hotel manager on his daily routines. This way she gained a holistic understanding of running a hotel and an insight into the co-operation and communication between departments. Among her other assignments she worked out an Excel-based system to ease double checking bookings between the hotel and Aalborg Congress & Culture Centre.

 

Useful examination projects

Several of the students’ final examination projects based on issues in the hotel have also been useful in practice. For instance, Susanne Andreasen remembers one intern’s analysis of the hotel’s way of welcoming new employees and an analysis of the hotel’s brand when the hotel was first started.

 

These analyses helped her and the staff see the way they do things in a different perspective and helped them improve those areas.

 

All in all Susanne Andreasen thinks that the internships have been very successful and she is definitely ready when students once again start looking for internship companies.