18 December 2020

Simon is loving life in Hawaii as Hilton Hotel manager

Simon is loving life in Hawaii as Hilton Hotel manager

We love talking to our former students to find out what they get up to after they finish college.

Each and every student has an interesting and inspiring story to tell, and hearing about their experiences is a great way to help young people figure out what they want to study at college.

We recently had the pleasure of talking to former student, Simon Amos, who has gone on to have an incredible career in hospitality.

Simon started washing dishes in a hotel in Battle when he was 13. Fast forward to the present day, and he is on the other side of the world working as the Hotel Manager at the Hilton Waikoloa Village in Hawaii.

He has worked for the world-renowned group of hotels for over a decade and held positions at the flagship hotel in Park Lane, London, worked in Beijing, China, before moving to the tropical American state.

“I am the only hotel manager in Hilton to have worked across three continents in a hotel management role. If I knew, back when I was at college, how much fun it is to work overseas, I would have done it sooner!

My career in hospitality started at the age of 13. While I was at school, I started a part-time job washing dishes and helping out in a local hotel in Battle. I knew this was something I enjoyed, so I decided to study a diploma in Hotel, Catering and Institutional Operations at college.

I studied at Hastings College of Art and Technology - now East Sussex College Hastings - from 1992 to 1994 and I loved it there. There was a small class of us, around 6-8 by the end. We became close and I am still friends with my classmates, one of them who runs casino operations in London.

I gained lots of great skills and really enjoyed the practical sessions in the kitchen and running the restaurant.

Towards the end of the course, I applied for jobs and positions at a number of 5-star hotels in London. I successfully got a management training apprenticeship at the amazing Ritz Hotel when I was 18. After completing my apprenticeship, I worked in France for a couple of years, then worked onboard the Queen Elizabeth II cruise ship. After that, I worked at the Cadogan Hotel in Knightsbridge, where I served the Queen Mother for her 99th and 100th birthday - which was quite a career highlight.

I then landed a position in food and beverage at the Hilton Park Lane, which is the flagship property, and that was the start of my Hilton journey. Over 10 years later, and I’m now the hotel manager at the 63 acre, 1241 room, Hilton Waikoloa Village in Hawaii, USA.

A typical day for me starts at 7am with a tour of the property in my golf cart. At 8:30am I have a daily operations meeting with the team, and after that, no two days are ever the same! I share my time between office catch up with emails, team meetings, and being out and about greeting team members, guests, and monitoring the property condition and cleanliness. My day is normally over after my last property tour at about 6pm. As the hotel manager, I am always on call 24/7.

Looking back on my time at college, I’d say that it has definitely helped to get me where I am today. It taught me many of the foundations I needed to be successful in my early years in London.

Hospitality is a career that takes dedication, passion and great interpersonal skills. It can be hard at times, long hours, and out of the ordinary days. But if you are passionate about working in this industry then the best advice I can give you is to work harder than the person next to you, get noticed by management, be patient, be respectful, be creative, but more importantly, be organized…..it’s a fast-paced industry - you’ll need those skills!”

During his time in Hawaii, Simon has been passionate about implementing positive change to help the environment. He removed the use of all single-use plastic straws in his hotel in 2018, which was then adopted by the rest of the Hilton group the following year.

You can hear more about Simon's job and his plans to protect the environment during a podcast interview with 360 Magazine.