Starwood is awesome!!!

Well, I’ve just finished my first week at the Princeville Resort and I’m in love with the whole company. Starwood, Princeville’s management company, is an awesome company and I feel that the potential to grow within is incredible.

On Monday I met James Abihai, the Director of Revenue Management (DORM) and my internship mentor. He’s set up an extensive training session for me to work with all of the hotel departments that directly affect revenue management. This week I worked with James, but for the next 4 weeks I’ll be rotating to work with different departments such as Reservations, Sales, Front Desk, and Accounting. Later in the summer I hope to also work with Housekeeping and Starwood Vacation Ownership (their timeshare service).

Throughout the week I have been meeting and getting to know a variety of employees at the hotel and have been very impressed with how welcoming and friendly everyone has been. Kelly Hoen, the hotel’s general manager has been particularly friendly and helpful. After a general staff meeting, she invited me to go with the Sales staff to a travel agent reception at the Sheraton Kauai in Poipu. It was a great opportunity to meet the staff at the Sheraton Kauai (another Starwood property and a sister property to Princeville) and also some of the top selling travel agents for the Hawaii leisure travelers market. Gotta love networking! I also got an invitation to work with the Sheraton’s Director of Revenue Management for a couple days and then I would be able to compare between the two properties. We’ll see how that turns out I suppose :)

One of the coolest things I learned about Starwood is their focus on internal promotion and advancement. For example, the Sheraton at Kauai had a revenue management trainee and he had only been there 8 months until he was promoted to be a Director of Revenue Management at a Starwood property on Maui. Hmmm . . . I like the sound of that! Already with all of the help from just James and Kelly, I can tell that this internship is going to be a very inspirational experience.