Royal Lancaster Hotel Internship: Self-Development & Action Plan

This essay presents a comprehensive self-development and action plan formulated following an internship experience at the Royal Lancaster Hotel. The author reflects on their roles as a hostess and waitress, initially in a Thai restaurant and subsequently in a European restaurant, highlighting the challenges and learning opportunities encountered. The experience fostered growth in areas such as customer service, teamwork, diversity management, and effective communication. The author emphasizes the importance of adapting to different customer personas, managing stress, and understanding food safety standards. Cross-training in front office operations further enhanced skills in guest relations and handling high-profile clients. The essay also details the development of a training guideline for new interns to ease their transition into the fast-paced hotel environment. The author concludes by outlining future career goals, including aspirations to become a university professor, and the need for continued industry experience and knowledge acquisition.

Running head: SELF-DEVELOPMENT AND ACTION PLAN
Self-development and action plan
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

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The last year had been one of the most fruitful years of life where I have been
exposed to the lot of my shortcomings and my abilities which have never thought about. I
have been working as an intern at the Royal Lancaster hotel in the food and beverage section.
The work had been very challenging for me as dealing with the customers at first hand is a
different experience even though I have dealt with customers in various sectors. My position
as a hostess and a waitress has been instrumental in making gain knowledge about the service
industry where the intangible aspect plays a significant role. My previous job experience had
been in the field of real estate where purchasing and selling of the real estate properties were
my primary work. However, in this context, it is entirely different from providing the
consumers with the best possible experience. Initially, it was easy for me as I was working in
a Thai restaurant in the Royal Lancaster Hotel and most of the staffs were from Thailand, and
I had good knowledge of the food. Therefore, initially, I did not learn much from my
internship as I was working as a waitress in that Thai restaurant.
However, in the past three months during my probationary period, I had changed my
position to a European restaurant where I had worked as a waitress during lunch and dinner.
The new work had been the highlight of my internship period where I got to learn about
excellent service, food allergy, the different standards, team bonding and diversity
management. I have worked with people from different cultural background, ethnicity and
values. This exchange of values and culture had provided me with an opportunity to learn
about teamwork and team bonding. I was not at all aware of the different food standards, and
I have discovered about the aa standards which measures the quality of the food we offer to
the consumers. I have also learned to communicate effectively with the co-workers. The
workers were from different backgrounds, so initially, it was tough for me to interact with
them. Initially, I was hesitant in communicating with them, but I needed help with various
aspects of my work so being proactive was the only option to learn to work effectively in that

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setting. There was a large number of experienced staffs that have guided me immensely to
deal with customers as the customers in European restaurant are different than in the Thai
restaurant. Working out of my comfort zone has made me develop new skills for interacting
with the consumers. I have experienced different types of consumers throughout my
internship were some of the consumers were very demanding and impatient. I have learnt to
keep my patience and deal with this customer effectively. Working in the food and beverage
industry requires awareness of the safety and health measures that have to be maintained, and
I had gained a substantial amount of knowledge in this regard.
I have changed roles and have gone through cross-training with the front office as a
receptionist. Therefore, I have learnt to make the guests feel welcome and to interact with
them effectively to add value to the overall service. This is the first time that I have dealt high
profile clients consisting of the Thai prime minister, the representative from the Thai embassy
and council of Ministers. This has helped immensely in developing a suitable personality and
dealing with the consumers under pressure. The past year has been hectic and stressful,
dealing with this level of stress has been difficult, and initially, it affected my work. I have
learnt to differentiate between the consumers and how to behave with them. Specific
consumers prefer to be called by their names, and there are certain customers that would
prefer madam or sir. The regular consumers want more friendly and cordial relationship with
the staff. Therefore, they are much more to interaction, but in the case of high profile
consumers, they prefer to be addressed respectfully and try to keep the relationship as formal
as possible. I have learnt to assess the different types of consumers by interacting with
different personas and developed strategies to address the issues faced by the organisation. I
have witness business guest, airline crews and regular travellers and everyone has their
different sets of needs; even though I am not able to manage all these consumers effectively, I
have learnt to differentiate between and approach them based on their background.

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I can provide customised services o different consumers segments which will be quite
helpful for my future growth in career. I have made an improvement to my Meta qualities
where I have developed a training guideline for all the new interns especially from those that
do not have the same background. The interns having different backgrounds face a lot of
stress and difficulty in fitting into this fast-paced and stressful environment. I have
developed a guide to handling different types of consumer personas and the way customised
services can be provided to each segment. This has helped me develop a better relationship
with my supervisors and managers which could provide me with an advantage during my
placement.
The previous work that I had was completely different as it belonged to an entirely
different sector. I had my own personal target where my focus was on selling of properties.
The nature of the relationship with the consumers was totally different where purchasing skill
was only important. However, during this internship, I have learnt to coordinate and
cooperate with my co-workers. I have realised the importance of working as a team and how
it can enhance the overall productivity of the organisation. I have worked with people of
different nationalities and cultural backgrounds which has been a cultural experience, and I
will be able to use the gained knowledge later in the future.
I have plotted a self-development map to identify my growth in the current
organisational setting in context to my previous work experience. I have analysed my growth
from the first day of the internship to the last day which shows that my ability to handle stress
and work pressure has increased significantly. The level of stress I felt at the initial stage of
the internship was much more when compared to the level of tension in the current situation.
I am able to take more stress and remain unperturbed and deal with consumers effectively.
Now I know how to deal with consumers with different ethnicity as everyone has their own
needs and preferences. My future goal is to be a professor at a university in Thailand and in

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order to accomplish my goal I need more years of experience in the industry. I want to work
even more and undergo several cross-training in several departments such as kitchen, pastry,
event and room service. As I want to pursue my career in food and beverages sector, I want to
know more about the operations, the current market trends, the future trends in the market
and the different policies implemented by the government in different hotels. I would like to
work at multiple hotels to identify the industry benchmarks and issues faced by each of these
organisations. The practical knowledge about these issues and the different risk management
techniques and mitigation techniques are essential for imparting knowledge to the future
generation. In overall, Royal Lancaster Hotel has given me the opportunity to grow
personally and organizationally which I can use later on in my career.

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