Using your language skills : Leisure and hospitality

Whether you are aiming to work abroad to develop or use your language skills, or whether you want to use your languages to support the leisure and hospitality industry in the UK, there are a variety of opportunities in this sector. A wide range of casual or seasonal work is also available, which provides opportunities to develop and build your language skills for other careers.

Travel and tourism

The travel and tourism industry covers a broad area including tour operators, travel agencies, business travel specialists, villa rental companies, airports, airlines, ferry operators, tourist boards and local authority tourist departments. Vacancies arise in all these organisations from time to time. If you are competent in a foreign language, you may be at an advantage for many posts. Though many visitors to the UK speak English, there is a growing awareness in Britain that we could do more to welcome tourists if staff across the leisure and hospitality industry had better language skills.

Some larger tour operators run graduate recruitment schemes, usually offering specialist training in such areas as marketing or finance. Employers look for graduates of any discipline with a strong sense of commercial awareness, numeracy and organisational skills. Graduates recruited into the travel agency side of the business are less likely to have opportunities to use their language skills.

Many companies use a Tour manager to accompany groups of tourists on tours to ensure that all arrangements throughout the trip run smoothly. Language skills would be useful when liaising with accommodation, attractions and restaurants and knowledge of culture, history and the country would be essential when pointing out places of interest to the tour group.

Work as a Holiday representative, though seasonal and not usually a long-term career, does allow you to use your languages. A high level of fluency is required to organise tourists in and out of airports, coaches and hotels, to act as a guide, handle paperwork related to travel documents, accident and injury forms, and deal with any crises that arise.

Some airlines recruit graduates of any discipline to graduate development programmes in departments such as marketing, finance and information management. Foreign languages will make you more effective, particularly in areas involving direct contact with customers. Outside the graduate programme, there are occasional opportunities for staff with languages to work in air terminals, and an additional modern language is sometimes needed for Air cabin crew.

There are a few opportunities for language graduates to work as ‘cultural consultants’. This small but emerging area combines translating, interpreting and in-depth knowledge of particular cultures to help businesses and other organisations whose staff are going to work abroad, or coming to the UK.

VisitBritain has an overseas network of outlets, from which it markets Britain as a business and holiday destination. Occasionally there are vacancies for graduate information officers who are friendly, customer-focused and fluent in at least two languages.

Hotels and catering

Foreign language skills are not required for work in British hotels, although having another language may be an asset, but some international groups have hotels abroad where there may be openings for experienced staff. Major hotel groups operate training schemes. If you don’t have a relevant degree, you may need to do a postgraduate vocational course to get into a good management training scheme. See Hotel manager and Hotel restaurant manager.

For more information on other roles check out hospitality.