Hospitality, Food & Tourism
If you like dealing with people, are outgoing and enjoy working as part of a team, you may enjoy working in the hospitality, food and tourism industry.
Hospitality
The hospitality industry offers a wider range of jobs and career paths.You may work in catering and events, restaurants or cafés, clubs or hotels. Caterers also work in schools, hospitals, private parties and corporate boardrooms, for example.
Nearly all hospitality jobs involve food, so there are plenty of kitchen jobs available. The ‘front of house’ roles (eg food and beverage jobs) involve working directly with customers, often in a very busy environment. You can be a waiter, bar attendant or functions coordinator. Supervisory and management positions are available in all of these job areas, and you could also open your own business.
If you like helping people and making them feel comfortable, you might like to work in accommodation services (reservations, porter or housekeeping, for example). People working in smaller hotels, motels and holiday parks often do a variety of things like working on reception at certain times, then helping with room service or food and beverage services at other times.
Food processing
There are also many roles involved in food processing (transforming raw ingredients into food or different foodstuffs eg fermenting beer, feezing juice, peeling potatoes, pasteurising milk). Commercial food processing takes place in many different locations: small or large kitchens, breweries, abattoirs, butcher shops, factories, vineyards and bakeries, just to name a few.
Training & qualifications
Specific hospitality qualifications from Certificate II - IV offer specialisations in kitchen operations, Asian cookery and catering operations. In addition to your training it is also important to get as much work experience as you can.
Food processing qualifications from Certificates II - IV offer specialisations in pharmaceutical manufacturing, plant baking, wine, retail baking cake & pastry and sales.
You can build on your initial qualifications and work experience to gain advanced qualifications for supervisory or management roles such as:
- Food and Beverage Supervisor - Certificate IV in Hospitality
- Kitchen Manager/Chef/Motel Manager - Diploma of Hospitality Management
- Production Manager (Food Processing) - Diploma of Food Processing.
Useful links
Discover Hospitality A terrific website for info on all aspects of the Australian hospitality industry. Includes real life stories, career tips and more.
Australian Apprenticeships Job Pathways (Hospitality and Food Processing)
Tourism
Tourism is an exciting industry and one of one of the largest in Australia. It also impacts on many other industries because tourists (local, interstate and overseas) spend money on transport, meals, shopping, accommodation, entertainment and more.
Broadly speaking, the tourism industry consists of all businesses that provide goods or services to support business, pleasure and leisure activities away from the home environment.
You could work in food & beverage services, travel agencies, advertising & promotion, administration, bus & car companies, builders and architects, for example. Special sectors include backpacker tourism, Aboriginal tourism, accessible tourism (making it easy for all people to enjoy tourism experiences), food & wine tourism, tour guiding, cruise tourism, attractions and theme parks, adventure travel and eco-tourism.
There’s a need for wide range of skills including e-commerce, recordkeeping, legal awareness, visitor safety, customer service, pricing, promotion and business management.
Training & qualifications
Certificate III qualifications allow you to specialise in areas such as retail travel, visitor information, outbound tours or attractions and theme parks.
If you aim to be a Tourism Business Manager or a Visitor Information Centre Supervisor, you may be interested in gaining the Certificate IV in Tourism (Operations) qualification, for example.
See also: Australian Apprenticeships Job Pathways (Travel and Tourism)