Women on top

Women in hotels have traditionally taken roles in housekeeping, rooms management and sales and marketing. But only a handful make it to general manager level. Why? Is it because women's home commitments give them little opportunity to progress? And if they do progress, how do they cope with the role?

It's almost impossible to know exactly how many female hotel general managers there are, but industry sources reckon that women account for about 15% of general manager positions. There are more in boutique hotels and in the provinces, but in the three-, four- and five-star London market a female general manager can expect her male peers to outnumber her by about six to one.

Nick Metcalfe, account director of recruitment consultant Chess Partnership, says he has encountered a worrying perception that women should not expect to become general managers. "I was struck by this phenomenon when lecturing at Lausanne Hotel School [in Switzerland]," he says. "I ran one-to-one interviews with students to talk about career options. When asked, none of the female students aspired to general management. I checked this out with the senior management of the school and found that this reaction was typical. I would accept that this is less the case in the UK, but it is still a factor."

Fallout rate of graduates in the hotel industry is, believes Metcalfe, another reason why women are so outnumbered by men in general manager posts.

"Typically, in the first five years post graduation, over 50% of people will leave the profession to join other industries. Whilst my evidence is anecdotal, it would seem that in the case of high-flying female management this figure is even higher. The result is that the talent pool for general management tends to be more male-dominated."

Lesley Reynolds, managing director of Portfolio International, cites family commitments removing women from the labour market just at the time they might be taking on a senior management role as the key reason why women have not made more inroads into this area. "We recruit general managers for small properties from about age 25," she says. "But when it comes to the larger hotel groups it's often not until the age of 35 that a career path will lead to general management, and this is just at the time when a lot of women choose to have children."

Reynolds, herself a working mother-of-two, says she is one of the biggest champions of female general managers and would like to see far more of them. "They do exist in the industry but tend to crop up much more in the boutique hotels than in the big corporates. Some big companies can't seem to cope with the idea that general managers want to take maternity leave, but there's no reason why this should be the case, and they should be able to cover it."

We talk to three female general managers, one single, one married without children and one married with a child, to see how they fare in this predominantly male world.

Vivien Sirotkin - "late 40s, don't ask" - is the general manager of the 168-bedroom Oxford hotel in Oxford, part of the Paramount Group. There are two other female general managers in the 16-strong group. This is her fifth general manager position. She has been there for 10 months and is married with one child.
Sirotkin has had 14 house moves in as many years. Her nine-year-old son Matthew is at his third junior school and, Sirotkin vows, she will not move him again. It's the price she has had to pay to pursue a successful career, one that has included general manager roles at Gleneagles and Cliveden.

It has, she says, been a long haul from the rooms division where she started out to the top of the tree, and balancing the needs of her home life and career aspirations has proved taxing.

Sirotkin says her path was made easier by the fact that her husband was away at sea during the early part of her career, meaning that he was not tied to a certain area, allowing her to move around. But there has been no doubt that his career suffered as hers became the more high-profile. "And how many husbands would put up with that?"

Since her son was born, Sirotkin has made further compromises. She took a three-year career break when he was two, until he went to school at the age of five. She has also exchanged the five-star, high-profile, general-manager-expected-to-be-there-all-hours role for a more defined position within the four-star Oxford hotel. "This hotel is predominantly a conference and business hotel and there is less pressure to be here all the time," she says.

In common with other female colleagues, Sirotkin finds that being a woman works to her advantage. "There are still a lot of very charming people out there who are very gracious to women, including some bosses who I know would give a male general manager a harder time than a female one." She does, however, occasionally feel left out with some male colleagues. "I'm not always in their gang, particularly when it comes to drinking or telling jokes."

Does Sirotkin favour employing women? "I often come in for some stick for employing women, but actually I don't deliberately choose them," she says. "I go for the best person for the job, as I like balance in the team."

But Sirotkin might remain one of a rare breed. "I don't expect to see an influx of female general managers into the industry," she says. "It's not getting any easier, and women still have to make the same family-versus-career choices. I'd love a job where I worked 40 hours a week. Instead, I've worked 60 or 70 hours a week for 20 years."

As for her son, Sirotkin says he has never known anything different. "I've always hired in quality help, and that puts my mind at rest, although I do sometimes resent the time that the au pair can spend with him. It helps that I've only got one child. It might have been different if I'd had more."

Johanne Falconer, 31, is married with no children and is the general manager of the 18-bedroom Howard hotel, Edinburgh, part of the Town House Company. There is one other female general manager in the four-strong group. This is her first general manager position; she has been there for 18 months.
Being a female general manager has its advantages, Falconer finds. She says she is occasionally called in to deal with a male guest who might have had a little too much to drink. The guests are invariably expecting a male manager and are ready for confrontation. But seeing a woman often has a calming effect, as some men can't bring themselves to be as confrontational to a member of the opposite sex as they would towards a member of their own sex. "They respect me more and often back down when they see me," she says.

Falconer started at the lowest level as a kitchen porter in hotels in Edinburgh and worked her way up. She has also done her time in rowdy and mostly male-dominated bars - particularly testing during rugby weekends. Falconer was deputy general manager of the Howard for three years before being promoted to the general manager position, a factor that counted in her favour when she moved up, as she felt that she had already proved herself. "I'd done my share of heaving beer kegs around, so people knew I was prepared to do everything," she says.

Does Falconer bring anything to the equation that a man wouldn't? At the risk of upsetting her male colleagues, she says, the answer to this one is more attention to detail. The Howard offers a butler service to all rooms, and Falconer says developing this has been one of the joys of her position. "Women do notice the little things about rooms that men might not."

The Howard has an unusually high number of women in its management team. The deputy manager, assistant manager, duty manager and front-of-house manager are all women. But this is just coincidence, she says. It's telling, however, that if there is a particularly difficult guest to deal with, then the head butler - a man - is sent in to see if he can sort out the problem. "I've never been in a situation that I felt I couldn't control. But it's important to have other people behind you of both sexes," says Falconer.

And what about the issue of children and whether they would fit in to this career path? "It wouldn't be a problem for me if I had a child, because I've got good family back-up," says Falconer. "Also, my husband is a chef and so he knows what is expected of my role. If male general managers can have children, then why can't women? I have been asked whether I plan to have children now that I am married. I say, that's my business, but in any event it's not going to affect my career."

Anne Scott, 38 and single, is the general manager of the 280-bedroom Sheraton Park Tower hotel, London, part of Starwood Hotels & Resorts. In Starwood's Europe, Middle East and Africa division, in which the Sheraton Park Tower falls, there are 170 hotels. Of these, there are only six female general managers. This is Scott's first general manager position and she is just four months into the role.
In the Sheraton Park Tower 87% of the guests are male. Scott often finds herself greeted by raised eyebrows when guests realise that she is the general manager. "They ask for the manager, and when I come out I can see in their faces that they weren't expecting a woman. Guests from the Middle East, where woman have such a different role, are particularly taken aback," she says.

Scott however, remains unfazed by this reaction. Before coming to the Sheraton Park Tower she worked for Marriott International as vice-president of human resources in charge of the Middle East. This involved travelling around setting up training courses in Marriott properties all over the Middle East and included a trip to Saudi Arabia that still influences her today.

"I don't know how I got the visa for Saudi, and when I arrived I could see officials looking at my passport wondering how on earth I had managed to get in," recalls Scott. "I had to be completely covered up when I was outside so that no one could see my face but was allowed to remove my headdress when inside. As a woman, even in our own Marriott hotels, I wasn't able to go to the main restaurant and had to conduct all business meetings in a family area where wives and children were allowed to go."

In this day and age this might all sound rather archaic, but Scott believes the experience stood her in good stead to take over the helm of the Sheraton Park Tower. "Having managed in Saudi, I really had this sense of ‘I can do anything and nothing can worry me.' My experiences in the Middle East as a whole mean that I understand subtle differences between cultures, and that can be really useful."

Scott is unusual in that she came to be a general manager via the human resources route. She had already worked for Starwood as director of human resources at the Sheraton Park Tower in the mid-1990s and so knew the hotel. Once she heard that the position of general manager was coming up it was, she says, just too good an opportunity to miss.

Having got the job, Scott went out and invested in brightly coloured suits - fuchsia, orange, and lilac, definitely not dark and corporate. "I was determined that I was going to stand out," she says. "Guests are unlikely to forget a general manager who is both female and dressed in bright clothes." Scott says she has heard male guests refer to the general manager "with the great legs" but claims she is not unduly bothered by the comments. "I could get upset but, to be honest, I prefer to turn it to my advantage and make sure that I stand out in people's memories."

The personal touch that might be overlooked by some of her male colleagues is an element that Scott believes she brings to the hotel. Since her arrival the roses and lilies in reception have been changed in favour of more exotic flowers. But she doesn't want to be thought of as a woman who likes doing flowers. "I like flowers and I do feel emotional about them. But I'm just as emotional about air conditioning, because that is a subject that is close to the heart of many of our guests."

So how does Scott balance her job with her home life? Well, she replies, it definitely helps that she is single with no children to worry about. "The job and my social life fade into one. You have to be prepared to put the hours in. I'm sure I could do it if my circumstances were different, but there would be sacrifices to either the family or the job."