Western Community College recently welcomed Ronald, Housekeeping Manager at the newly opened Homewood Suites by Hilton Surrey, to speak with our Bachelor of Hospitality Management (BHM) students. Ronald graduated from a hospitality program himself in 2002 and has spent the 24 years since working his way through room attendant, supervisor, assistant manager and manager roles at properties including Four Seasons, Hilton and Marriott — most recently leading pre-opening housekeeping at Homewood’s 189-suite Surrey property.
His message to students was less “here’s how to get ahead” and more “here’s what’s actually true.” Below are the questions students asked him, in his own words.
“I’ll have a degree — can I apply straight for a supervisor job?”
Not automatically, and Ronald’s own career is the proof. After graduating, he spent a year in the Netherlands where, through an unusual set of circumstances, he was managing an entire housekeeping department within two months of starting as a room attendant. He assumed that experience would carry over. It didn’t.
“Lo and behold, in my mind, I was a manager already,” he said. “But in reality, when you graduated, everybody need to start from the bottom. You have to understand that. You cannot suddenly becoming a manager right away, becoming a supervisor.” He came home and applied for supervisor roles anyway — and kept getting turned down until he took a front desk agent job and rebuilt from there.
“If I already have hospitality experience, doesn’t a degree matter less?”
It’s the opposite — the degree is what separates you from people with more years but no formal training. When Ronald was hired as an assistant manager at Four Seasons, he was up against candidates who already held that title. He didn’t have the title. He had the education.
“If you compare from experience role, you’re gonna be overwhelmed,” the hiring manager told him. What set him apart was his background in hospitality management specifically — the ability to explain the why behind a decision, not just execute a task. His advice to students: “When you become supervisor for two, three, five years compared to ten years person, but you have those degree… you might be having the leverage.”
“How do I get promoted if there’s no open position yet?”
You start doing the job before it’s officially yours. When Ronald wanted to move from supervisor to assistant manager, there was no vacancy. So he asked his assistant manager to teach him — on his own time, unpaid, after his regular shift ended. She taught him purchase orders, scheduling, and day-to-day admin work. When she went on vacation, he covered her role. Later, he was asked to represent the entire housekeeping department at morning operations meetings with the general manager — something he described as terrifying at the time.
By the time an assistant manager position actually opened, he’d already been doing the job for months. “How do you know?” the interviewer asked him. “Because I’ve done it,” he said.
“Does it matter how I handle being corrected?”
More than most students expect. Years after Ronald was a room attendant, his former supervisor tracked him down and offered him a manager position — specifically because of how he’d responded to feedback back when he was cleaning rooms. When she pointed out mistakes in his work, he didn’t just fix them; he went back afterward to ask if there was anything else he’d missed.
“You’re the only room attendant who come and tell me and asking me any more rooms,” she told him, years later, when she recommended him as her successor. His takeaway: “The result not right away… but the result is few years after.”
“Isn’t getting my PR (or the ‘top’ job) the finish line?”
No — and Ronald warned students not to treat it that way. He spent years working toward permanent residency in Canada, including taking a room attendant position — a step down in title from supervisor — just to get into the country under a hotel’s limited work-permit openings. When his PR finally came through in 2012, he says the instinct to relax was exactly the wrong one.
“That’s just another step. It’s not the end of the journey,” he said. “You’re gonna be finishing line, but when you finish, there’s a new starting line.” He’s applied the same logic throughout his career, at one point deliberately taking a lateral move to assistant manager — at the same salary — because it was the faster route to a manager role at a bigger property.
“What should I actually focus on right now, as a student?”
Your degree, first. Ronald was direct about this: part-time work and co-op placements are worth doing, but not at the cost of your studies. “Do not jeopardize your study,” he said. “Once you got your educational and experience, it will come” — meaning the pay and the title. Trying to rush the money before finishing the degree tends to cost students both.
The short version
Nobody in Ronald’s story skipped the floor-level work — not the person with 24 years of experience, not the one with a management degree, not even the one who was informally running a department within his first two months on the job. The degree doesn’t replace starting at the bottom. It’s what helps you make the most of it once you’re there.
This session was part of Western Community College’s Employment and Career Services programming for Bachelor of Hospitality Management students, connecting classroom learning with direct industry perspective from working hotel managers.
