Romain RAPOPORT罗曼•拉波波特 - 巴黎奢华五星级酒店销售主管
罗曼的故事于2014年十一月份更新。
瓦岱勒学院2013届校友罗曼•拉波波特（Romain Rapoport）没用多长时间就在巴黎（Paris）最漂亮的酒店取得了事业上的成功。他刚刚结束在五星级凯旋门万丽酒店（Hotel Renaissance Arc de Triomphe*****）的最后一次实习就被五星级巴黎特罗卡迪罗公园万丽酒店（Renaissance Paris Le Parc Trocadero*****）聘为特别活动协调员（Special Events Coordinator）。一年半以后，他被巴黎另外一所五星级酒店：香榭丽舍万豪酒店（Marriott Champs Elysees）提拔为销售主管（Sales Executive）。接下来罗曼将和我们讲述这些令人眼花缭乱的升职故事。
罗曼，在告诉我们你现在的工作之前，你能先告诉我们你是如何从最后一次实习过渡到你的第一份工作的吗？
无论从哪个角度来说，在凯旋门万丽酒店六个月的实习经历都让我受益匪浅。在跨国集团工作如万豪国际酒店（Marriott），对我来说不仅要保证高质量而且我也要确保公司要认同我从瓦岱勒学院（Vatel）所学的价值观。我的工作是负责在酒店组织活动：新闻发布会，讨论会，生日会，下班后的聚会等等。我的客户都是受人瞩目的公众人物并且要求极高，因此我组织的活动必须既要有都市感又要有外国情调。当我听说特罗卡迪罗公园万丽酒店正在招聘特别活动协调员时，我迫不及待的抓住了这次机会并且得到了录用。
关于在奢华酒店担任特别活动协调员的工作你能跟我们多说一些吗？
作为一名活动协调员务必要确保对酒店每一个活动进行无缝传递，无论是对公司还是对个人。作为一名活动协调员，我的工作就是要确保得到了所有需要的信息，因此才可以在活动前，活动中和活动后给所有部门提供建议。这意味着如果当你在豪华酒店从事这类工作时，你必须有五星级的服务水平，不能错过任何细节。
我亲自组织过住宅研讨会，讨论会，商业午餐和晚餐，公司鸡尾酒会，订婚或结婚宴及洗礼仪式，对我来说最重要的就是使每次活动都尽可能的与众不同，同时也要认真遵守客户的指示。这样才能使每次活动都独一无二，这也正是顾客想要的。
正如我之前所说，瓦岱勒学院和万豪国际酒店有相同的价值观，这也正是他们鼓励我在活动的个性化尝试上走的更远的原因，他们让我在酒店推出了一个名为“Meeting Imagined”的项目，目前万豪国际酒店总公司正在应用这个项目，关于这一点你可以在YouTube上查看。
在你看来，如果想做这种工作需要磨练什么样的品质？
当然，需要你喜欢从事销售。
• 你必须有良好的组织能力，能够周密系统地组织活动，当你同时负责20个项目时，这一点显得尤为重要。
• 你必须积极主动，提出方案，并保证你的方案顺利实施。
• 你必须是一个出色的领导者，从而你才能和所有的队员交流并被他们所理解。
• 你必须有一颗好奇的心，保持开明的心态，并能嗅出接下来的发展趋势。
• 你必须随时待命。
你的新工作是销售主管（Sales Executive），你是怎样得到这份工作的，这项工作都包括什么？
从事特别活动管理（Special Events Management）让我了解了酒店可能会发生的一切事件并根据不同的情况提供不同的服务。因此几个月后，我觉得我可以从事销售工作，而且我所申请的职位恰好有空缺，再加上之前优秀的工作成绩和评价，我如愿以偿的被聘用了。我的工作包括向新客户 – 这里我主攻企业市场和我们之前就有过合作的老客户提供不同的服务，来提高酒店的营业额。为了实现这一目标你必须和客户保持极好的关系并不断地超越他们的期待。当然，这样就可以把他们变成你的回头客。
你在瓦岱勒学院所学的课程为你这两份工作提供了哪些帮助？
瓦岱勒学院高质量的课程和高水平的教师队伍，使我在开始工作时就具备酒店管理业的大量经验和知识。我们所有的教授都来自这个领域并在一直在这个领域工作。他们教会我们如何做决定并为所做的决定负责，如何不断地超越自己，如何在酒店管理业的战略规则下进行工作而且你必须知道每个部门都在做什么。这就是瓦岱勒学院著名的“知识”：学术知识，专门技能，知道如何与人共事，懂得如何运用这些知识并知道如何从事管理。
在你看来，你从瓦岱勒学院和实习中所学到的什么技能对你的成功有帮助？
• 法国酒店市场的知识，知道如何与他人共处，了解规章制度，懂得管理及会计和税收等等。
• 在专业应用课程和实习中具体应用这些基础知识。
• 我们工作中所需要的人类不可或缺的品质：坚持不懈，永葆激情，对学习和成功的渴望，利他主义并恪守令顾客满意的诺言。
对于那些想去瓦岱勒学院学习并想在酒店与旅游业工作的学生，你有什么建议吗？
要永葆激情，保持对知识的渴望，对自己严格要求；这将有益于你的日常工作，你也会因此而更加幸福快乐。
你接下来有什么计划?
我想要成为我工作领域的专家，我的长期计划是向国外传播我的知识和技能。
Romain RAPOPORT
Romain's story was updated in November, 2014
A Vatel 2013 alumnus, Romain Rapoport didn’t need a lot of time for a successful career in the most beautiful hotels in Paris. He had just finished his final internship at the Hotel Renaissance Arc de Triomphe*****, when he was hired as the Special Events Coordinator at the Renaissance Paris Le Parc Trocadero***** Hotel. A year and a half later, he was promoted as the Sales Executive in another five-star hotel in Paris: the Marriott Champs Elysees. Romain will tell us about these dizzying promotions.
Romain, before telling us what you now do, could you tell us how you transformed your final internship into your first job?
My six month internship at the Renaissance Paris Arc de Triomphe was a very rewarding experience from all points of view. Working in an international group like Marriott, for me was not only a guarantee of quality but I was also sure that I would be working with a company that shared my values and those that I learned when I was attending Vatel. My job consisted in organizing events in the hotel: press conferences, workshops, birthday celebrations, after-work parties, and so on. My clients were very demanding ones, in the spotlight, and I had to propose events that were both urban and exotic. When I heard that Le Parc Trocadero was looking for a Special Events Coordinator, I jumped on the occasion and I was hired.
Can you tell us more about the job of Special Events Coordinator in a luxury hotel?
An Events Coordinator makes sure that there is seamless delivery of every event in the hotel, both for companies and for individuals. It’s his or her job to make sure that he’s got all the information required to do this. So then he can give recommendations to all the other departments that will be working before, during and after the event. And when you do this in a luxury hotel, that means that you have to have five-star service and never miss out on a note.
I personally organized residential seminars, workshops, business lunches and dinners, corporate cocktails, engagement or wedding parties, and baptisms. The most important thing for me each time was to make each event as personal as possible, while carefully following all of my customers’ specifications. Because of this, each event was unique, and that’s what my customers all wanted.
Like I said earlier, Vatel and Marriott share the same values and that’s why they encouraged me to go even farther in my personalization attempts for events, and they allowed me to roll out a program in the hotel called “Meeting Imagined,” that the Marriott head office uses, and that you can check out here on YouTube:
In your opinion, what qualities should you hone if you want to do this kind of job?
Of course, you need to like working in sales.
•You have to be well organized, thorough and methodical. That’s really important when you’re taking care of twenty projects at the same time.
•You have to be proactive, and be able to defend the initiatives you’ve taken.
•You’ve got to be a really good leader in order to communicate and be understood by all the different team members.
•You have to be curious and always be open-minded, to be able to sniff out the next trend.
•And you always have to be available.
How were you hired for your new job as a Sales Executive and what do you do?
Working in Special Events Management allowed me to become aware of everything that could take place in a hotel and the different services offered. So after a few months, I felt like I could work in sales. Once again, there was a job vacancy that I applied for, and I was hired because of my results and assessments. My work consists in developing the hotel’s turnover by proposing different services both to new customers - and here I’m mostly targeting the corporate market, - and customers that we’ve already worked with before. To achieve this, you have to have an excellent relationship with your customers in order to consistently exceed their expectations. Of course, this is to turn them into repeat customers.
How did the courses you took at Vatel prepare you for these two jobs?
The quality of the courses and teachers in Vatel allowed me to start working with quite a bit of experience and knowledge of the hotel management field. All of our professors come from this sector and still work in it. They teach us how to make decisions and be accountable for them, how to constantly excel, how to work with strategic rules in hotel management and that you always have to know what’s going on in every department. This is Vatel’s renowned “knowledge:” academic knowledge, know-how, knowing how to work with people, knowing how to convey this knowledge, and knowing how to manage!
What skills that you learned at Vatel and in your internships allowed you to succeed, in your opinion?
•Knowledge of the French hotel market, knowing how to live with others, legal rules and regulations, management, accounting, taxation, etc.
•Concrete application of all of these basics in our professional application courses and internships.
•Development of indispensable human qualities in our line of work: dogged perseverance, passion, wanting to learn and succeed, altruism, and commitment to customer satisfaction.
What advice would you give to students who would like to attend Vatel and work in the Hospitality and Tourism Management fields?
Be passionate, always want to learn more, and be demanding with yourself; this will facilitate your daily work and you’ll be all the happier because of it.
What are your upcoming projects?
I’d like to become an expert in my field of work and why not, in the long term, export my knowledge and skills abroad.
