I was in the hotel business for ~30 years. The bulk of it was with major hotel companies.
It’s a 24/7/365 industry for most jobs. You have to be customer service oriented. When I interviewed prospective candidates, a question asked was, “Why do you want to get into the industry?” If they answered with something about loving to travel or staying in hotels or adored television shows about any aspect of the business, it didn’t gain them any points. They were as clueless about it as I was when first starting out.
The upside is it exposes one to a plethora of fields tied to the industry. I’ve watched people in the lowest jobs move up into executive positions based upon their interests and talents. On the corporate level, new employees joined the team with a degree in their field, like accounting, IT, human resources, design & construction, sales & marketing, etc. A few co-workers took advantage of the educational assistance and earned a bachelor’s or master’s degree in the field of interest.
The key is to work for a company that has a stellar reputation, be it company managed or franchised. The other is to have a great supervisor. All of this information can come out by doing a little front end research and during the interview process.