So many students every year go abroad to execute their summer internship as part of their studies or just to improve their cv. Many of them want to find a nice large 5 star hotel so they can get as much experience as they can or even to feel more secure thinking a 5 star hotel can be my best option. 5 star hotels can be a great destination for customers but usually not for an internee. The pressure and exepctations are too high and the pay always low.
There are hotels worldwide that are 5 star in treatment for students and also for guests but those are extremely limited. Hotels in general terms do not have the interest of the students in their mind especially if they know they ll never return there for work so they try to take advantage of them as much as possible.
We face a situation as such in a hotel in Cyprus and specifically in Paphos where the Owners and management of the hotels did not care at all about the students and their well being. Imagine that one student during work had an accident and the management did not even offer to take her to the hospital it was another waiter who felt bad and called an ambulance. How can you avoid hotels as such? You need to ask the hotel or company where you will do your internship what the internees mean for them. Usually your best option is to find your internship through a company with good reputation in the field and that is because companies that do this job specifically want their internees to be happy sto they can keep having new every year. For them an internee is a customer and a company with long presence in the field it meant that it offers an acceptable level of service if not great.
It is true that most of the hotels you will find in Cyprus have a very bad reputation for work enviroment and work ethics and that is because they feel superior to other nations. Hospitality job is hard as it is and regardless of the problems you face daily you might have a bad supervisor or colleague who treats you with disrespect, that is usually the problem and the reason a lot of students do not want to work in hospitality sector.
When you have people in the most important positions who do not have empathy for the staff because their age is not the one that they can get accustomed to the new work habbits and the owners come from a different background and not Hospitality then things can go totally wrong and staff can live a nightmare.
Students face situations like this usually in very busy destinations where everybody is more interested to make money than to offer hospitality services. Mass tourism at budget hotels does not require expertise it simply requires hands and bussers. All inclusive hotels are a bad destination for students to learn how to work in tourism and hospitality for the reasons explained above it could be beneficial only if the organization of the hotel would be good but most hotels do not have this organization and if they do they require professionals and not students.
How to find out if a hotel belongs in this category? Make a simple question, Can i have your employee guide and welcome pack? If they don’t have one then run away. IF they say they have HR department then ask who has finished HR and in which university. A BAD HR person is worse than no HR. So what is that a student should do who wants to do an internship abroad? Find a company that will be on your side on the small problems you will face and will give you an advise when its needed. If you do not want to go through a company then simply call them and ask them information about the hotel and if it is good to go.
