Hotel Operations Careers at White Lodging

My name is Anne McVay. I’m the Director of Services at the JW Marriott Indianapolis. I have been in this role for about four and a half years. My hospitality journey started in an interesting way. I was in college, and a hotel was actually the only place that would call me back. I desperately needed a job and I wanted to be a hostess in the restaurant. And the hotel called me and said, we’ve met you, we think that you’d be great as a front desk agent — is that something you’re interested in? So I found something that I loved doing. I loved the people that I worked with. I loved the guests that I got to work with. And then once I finished school, I moved to Indianapolis and worked with Omni Hotels and Resorts for about six years in a lot of different rooms positions there. And then I had the opportunity to join White Lodging 10 years ago, when I started as a loss prevention manager at the Indianapolis Marriott Downtown. I’ve worked at the JW Marriott twice now, once in front office, now in housekeeping, and then also at the Louisville Marriott Downtown in housekeeping. In housekeeping, there is no actual typical day. We start our day off making sure that we’re set up for success for the day. We are getting our checkouts cleaned, we’re checking VIP rooms, the stay-over service is being completed. It’s not the most glamorous job, but I want my team to feel like they can come in and be successful and be their best self. To me, my guests are my associates. So I see it that it’s my job to take care of my internal guests, and in turn, my guests are who are going to take care of the guests that are coming to stay at the hotels. My job is to make sure that we have the right people in the right places. And I see myself as the captain of our ship, whether it’s getting them ready for their next move within the hotel or the company, or working with them to make them the best at what they do in their craft. One of the good things about White Lodging is there are a lot of opportunities to learn things outside of your areas, and there are different trainings that you can attend. I wish that maybe I would have ventured out of my comfort zone a little bit more as I was coming up in my career, and maybe tried restaurants or banquets or something outside of the rooms division. Learn as much as you can from the experts. Cleaning rooms is really important, and having a clean hotel is very important. Being a leader isn’t just about checking the boxes — did we get all the rooms cleaned today or not? It’s your associates: do they feel comfortable coming to you if something’s going on? Really taking the opportunity to work with people and taking care of people — that’s one thing that will make you very successful in a job like this. A big thing for me was patience as well. Did I want to be a housekeeping manager yesterday? Absolutely. But taking the opportunity to learn as much as I could in my supervisor role, being patient until the next opportunity did present itself, asking good questions and thinking outside of the box and sharing my ideas with my leaders was something that has made me successful in my career.