Culinary, Travel, and Hospitality Careers

If you are customer-service oriented and enjoy working with people, culinary, travel, and hospitality jobs might be a good fit for your talents and interests. Attending a culinary college will prepare you to become a chef or a cook in just a few years. For those interested in hospitality services, many programs also exist to prepare you for careers like hotel and restaurant management. Various tourism and travel careers may also be of interest to you. A summary of the culinary and hospitality fields follows.

About the Fields

A chef, cook, and food preparation worker are examples of culinary careers. These professionals season, prepare, and cook a variety of foods, including salads, entrees, soups, appetizers, pastries, and desserts. Most culinary professionals work in restaurants, cafeterias, hotels, and other food-service establishments. Chefs and cooks, who usually attend culinary college, design recipes and prepare food, while food-prep workers handle tasks like peeling vegetables, trimming meat, and cleaning cooking areas.

Hospitality jobs typically refer to careers in hotel or restaurant settings. Hospitality professionals are responsible for ensuring the quality of the guests' experience and the profitability of the operation. Hotel managers and restaurant managers both qualify as hospitality professionals. Event planning, also called meeting and convention planning, is also considered a hospitality-related career and is growing very quickly.

Travel and tourism professionals help travelers organize the logistics of their trips and find the best possible accommodations. Such professionals often offer advice on travel destinations and handle the arrangements for flights, hotel stays, car rentals, and travel tours for clients. Travel and tourism professionals also promote travel packages for certain resorts and cruise lines.

Career Possibilities

Most students who complete culinary college or a similar training program go on to become chefs, cooks, restaurateurs, food critics, or food service managers. Those with the highest levels of training and experience often choose to open their own restaurants, bakeries, or cafés. With enough experience, some culinary professionals may also become private chefs.

In the hospitality industry, most educated workers choose to go into some type of managerial role. Hotel or lodging managers, for example, cater to their guests' needs and oversee the financial and operational dealings of the hotel. Likewise, restaurant managers cater to diners' needs and handle accounting and operational details for the establishment. Lower-level hospitality jobs include hotel housekeeping and food service workers.

Those interested in travel and tourism often find careers as travel agents or promotional agents for hotels, resorts, theme parks, and cruise lines. Nowadays, travel agents tend to specialize in one destination or type of traveler in order to deliver the most value to clients. Qualified candidates may also obtain jobs as tour guides.

Education and Credentialing

A typical culinary college offers a two-year training program that may or may not bestow graduates with an associate's degree upon graduation. More advanced, four-year culinary programs prepare students to become chefs and cooks in upscale restaurants and other fine-dining settings. Culinary professionals do not have to obtain certification, but certificates are available in topics like baking and pastry arts.

Most hospitality jobs require at least a bachelor's degree, especially for managerial positions. Four-year degrees in hotel and restaurant management are recommended, although an associate's degree may be acceptable in certain situations. Rarely, work experience may substitute for educational training in the hospitality industry. Certification is not mandatory in this field, but it may enhance a candidate's competitiveness. For example, restaurant managers are encouraged to pursue a Foodservice Management Professional (FMP) designation.

Additional Info

The culinary and hospitality industries have numerous positions to offer, from entry-level careers to management roles. If the hospitality, travel, and culinary fields do not appeal to you, you might be more interested in a career in a different industry. Search through our career field articles to find other career paths that might interest you.

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