TAKE 5: Alice Gitau

Alice Wanjiku Gitau is a 28-year-old professional in the hospitality industry. She is currently working with a hospitality consulting company where she leads the customer evaluation team. PHOTO | COURTESY

What you need to know:

  • She is currently working with a hospitality consulting company where she leads the customer evaluation team
  • I graduated in 2012 August and in September that same year, I got a job with the Hilton, Nairobi, as a conference and events coordinator. It was a wonderful and amazing experience and I often say I could not have asked for a better introduction to the real world.
  • There have been some low points as well. I got a great opportunity to join Capital Club Dubai, voted number seven of the top 10 private clubs in the world. Unfortunately, just when I thought I had gotten the hang of my job, I lost it.

1. What exactly do you do?

I work with restaurants and hotels. I assist them with their day-to-day operations. My role involves sending undercover guests to the company’s clients (hotels/restaurants) where these guests get to eat, drink and/or sleep at a property. They then get back to me within 24 hours with a detailed report on their experience. You could call me a mystery shopping manager. 

2. Why did you choose the hospitality industry?

I like to think I made a clear-cut decision to head here when I picked what to do while I was at university. AIso, I remembered travelling while I was a child and just loving the smell of hotels. I can’t explain it, but it felt like the air in there was different from regular oxygen, and so I thought, why not work in such an awesome place all the time. I went on to study hotel and restaurant management at USIU-Africa.

I graduated in 2012 August and in September that same year, I got a job with the Hilton, Nairobi, as a conference and events coordinator. It was a wonderful and amazing experience and I often say I could not have asked for a better introduction to the real world. I worked here for two years and left in 2014. 

3. Working in hotels and with international brands must mean you get to meet some really cool people, right?

At Capital Club East Africa, where I worked as a private events coordinator, I got to work with a bunch of great people, probably the best team I have ever worked with to date. I also got to meet a number of great people from all over the world, one of them being Aliko Dangote when we hosted the Forbes Person of The Year 2015. Another was the General Manager, Estee Lauder, Sue Fox, who walked up to me and thanked me for the successful Launch of the MAC brand in Kenya. 

4. Has it all been smooth sailing?

No, there have been some low points as well. I got a great opportunity to join Capital Club Dubai, voted number seven of the top 10 private clubs in the world by CNN in 2014. It was amazing living there and feeling as though I were in the centre of the world. Talk about a melting pot of different cultures. There was constant exhilaration everywhere you looked - something was always happening.

Except during Ramadhan, of course. Unfortunately, just when I thought I had gotten the hang of my job, I lost it. I stayed there for a while, looking for work elsewhere but nothing came up, and so I decided to return home. Back here, I could not find anything that was suitable to me. Thankfully, after a couple of months searching, my former boss from CCEA called me up and told me he had an offer for me. 

5. And that’s how you got here, then.

Yes. When I met up with my boss, I remember asking him, “You think I can do this?” he said, “Yes, because you are very strict about the level of service you get.”

I have found this job gives me an opportunity to raise the standards of hospitality in the country. We are putting to task those that run hotels and restaurants and asking them what their growth plan or agenda is, whether their team is aligned to it, and what value they are offering their team members and clients.

I think if you’re in the hospitality industry and the answers to these questions are not positive, you need to start thinking about how long you will really be in business. We want to change the industry standards so that businesses can stay open longer than just a year, and so that team members stop moving from restaurant to restaurant and hotel to hotel looking for the same job over and over and never growing their careers. I may not be breathing hotel air daily, but I am enjoying what I do.