A hospitality people who doesn’t want to be a director is not a good marketer
Hello everyone, my name is Xiaotong Li. I’m from Hebei province, China. My undergraduate degree is Hospitality Management from Arizona State University. And now my major is Integrated Marketing at NYU SPS, and my concentration is marketing analytics. This is my first blog, I am very nervous, and I hope you will like my blog, I will take the weekly blog afterward seriously, I hope I can learn a lot of market-related knowledge. I believe that through the blog we can get to know everyone better and make progress together.
About me
I think I am a straightforward girl, and also outgoing. I have a strong curiosity about all new things like trying new things, such as sky diving, snorkeling, and so on. No resistance to all cute things, especially small fluffy animals, such as kitties. I have a super fat cat. I didn’t bring him to New York, because I didn’t want him to endure about ten-hour flight. I miss him so much.
Like most people, I love to travel. We can travel together sometime if have a chance~ I just got back from Miami last week. My undergraduate major also involved some tourism courses, such as tourism trends, how to build tourist attractions, marketing, etc., which gives me a deeper understanding of tourism. Tourism is a win-win business for tourists and hosts, with both positive and negative impacts on the environment, society, and economy.
I usually spend my spare time watching TV Program or playing with my cute cat.
➡️Why director
I am a fanatic fan of k-pop, so when I was in college, I used to go to various cities to see live concerts by my favorite singers.
Every time I saw their pictures on TV or my phone, I was envious of the staff around them. Therefore, I tried to submit many resumes to Hunan Television. Hunan TV is the leader in the Chinese TV industry. I was lucky to receive an offer, and when I checked my email and found out it was Happy Camp, I was so excited that I couldn’t sleep because it was the most popular show and I’ve been watching this show every Saturday since I was a kid! I had been interning in Changsha for six months, and my instructor asked me if I wanted to consider transferring to a full-time director. I really want to say YES! These six months are the happiest six months I’ve ever spent, despite the tiredness of staying up late. I worked with a group of nice people, and they all have a very wild imagination and creativity, and then turn those into a TV program. I worked with my favorite celebrities, and I chatted with them and discussed some details of program recording, which was my dream as a child.
But how to say, because of my parents’ opposition. I returned to continue my master’s degree. It’s cool to do what you like as a job, but I cannot achieve that in the future😭. Therefore, I want to be a director of a TV program if time and money weren’t an issue. I can try something new and meet different people all the time. Maybe I can invite my idol to come to my program.
➡️Transfer to Hospitality
I enrolled in a major in administration in the first year. But when I was planning my career, I realized that there was a great possibility that my future job would be a day-to-day form of written work, I made up my mind to change my major. I might be terrible at doing the same thing every day, and repeating the same thing all the time, which makes me tired and loss passionate. Due to the arrangement of the college, administration, and hospitality management, the students of the two majors went to visit the hotel together for practice, and I became interested in hospitality management. A professor said “to serve others is to serve yourself”, which gave me a new understanding of the service industry. So I changed my major to hospitality management. In this major, I learned the systematic knowledge of hotel management and met many excellent hotel practitioners. I don’t regret my decision, even though my parents were against it at first because, in China, the service industry is often seen as inferior.
➡️Transfer to marketing
In 2020, I have an internship at the Marketing department of Marriott International, which inspired my interest in marketing.
During my internship at Marriott, I made a complete service blueprint for the hotel during the epidemic, as well as created an integrated marketing communications campaign for the hotel services. Thanks to such work, I have learned about four integrated marketing communications methods, the AIDA Model, the Hierarchy of Effect Model, and various media channels. I also learned the goal of developing a new service is to drive the hotel revenue and how to define a goal from a marketing perspective. My instructor always encourages me to be creative, and she said I have the talent to be a marketer, which gives me the courage to change my major again. Therefore, I choose Integrated Marketing in SPS. Marriott becomes my favorite hotel brand after this internship, and my career goal is to work at Marriott international.
⏯ Sometimes I feel that my study and internship experiences are very mixed and not very helpful to me in my future job search. However, I think young people should try more new things, through trial and error, to find their own real interest and strength. It is these complex experiences that have made me who I am now!!!
