9 Hospitality CV Examples and Writing Guide

Ensure your CV format is structured to best highlight your unique experience and life situation.

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How to write a hospitality CV

Before you begin writing, make sure you know how to write a CV in a way that best emphasises your strengths.

Whether you’re working in tourism, food and beverage service, lodging, recreation, or event management, your role in the hospitality industry is essential for impressing guests and turning them into repeat customers.

And to show prospective employers you’re a great addition to their team, you need to make a CV that highlights your top hospitality skills and experiences.

Here are three tips to help you write a 5-star hospitality CV and receive more interviews.

1. Stand out with a descriptive CV personal statement

Working in hospitality hinges on making a positive first impression so new visitors will enjoy your services and want to return.

And because employers seek hospitality workers who know what important qualifications are necessary to succeed in a service role, include a CV personal statement (also called a CV ‘About Me’ or CV personal profile) at the top of your hospitality CV.

A hospitality CV personal statement consists of 2–4 sentences and captures an employer’s attention as they’re reading your CV.

Here’s what to include in your hospitality personal statement:

• years of relevant work or volunteer experience
• educational background or training
• key skills related to customer service or working with the public
• reasons or goals for applying to the role

If employers see that your hospitality CV personal statement contains relevant details that match what they’re looking for in their candidates, they’ll be more likely to read the rest of your application and consider you for an interview.

This is an example of a personal statement from our hospitality CV template:

2. Highlight your key skills on your hospitality CV

Doing hospitality work requires various skills, so include them on your CV to let employers know you’re ready to get to work.

First, mention your hard skills. You’ve likely gained hard skills from working in certain branches of the service industry or from enrolling in hospitality-related courses.

For instance, speaking another foreign language is a valuable hard skill because it tells employers you can interact with non-English-speaking customers and make them feel welcome.

Here are other relevant hard skills for your hospitality CV:

• Bartending
• Computer skills
• Compliance training
• Hotel management software (e.g., eZee Frondesk, Hotelogix)
• Maths skills
• Management skills
• Point of sale (POS) systems knowledge
• Record keeping

By contrast, soft skills show how you behave around guests and customers in a work setting.

For example, maintaining positive relationships with your customers and being an excellent communicator is an essential part of working in the hospitality industry. Employers want to know you can handle customer inquiries and complaints gracefully during every guest interaction, so include customer service as one of the top skills on your CV.

These soft skills are also essential in the hospitality industry:

3. Optimise your hospitality CV using keywords from the job advert

Because you’ll be representing their brand, employers want to see you’ve read their job advert carefully and understand what their ideal applicant looks like.

So try adding relevant keywords throughout your work experience section for your CV, skills section, and CV personal statement to increase your chances of getting noticed by an employer and show them you have the skill set they’re looking for.

Here are some hospitality-related keywords for your CV:

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