Profile Evaluation - Hotels Background

Hi SOlaris, here are the clarifications:

In my professional experience, I have worked for a company that operates and manages businesses primarily in India, and, largely in the FMCG sector. I am looking for a career shift in the following fields :

1. Luxury services marketing (Consulting or Industry)
2. Luxury products marketing (Consulting or Industry)
3. Real Estate marketing & development (Consulting or Industry)

And lastly, the tricky one : Financial services marketing or consulting

In my career, although I have been exposed somewhat to world-class brands, through our franchise agreement with Starwood Hotels Worldwide, there is a distinct absence of an international exposure both in terms of interaction with professionals from global companies / MNC's and knowledge inputs in the form of global best practices. Because of this, many fundamental questions concerning things like principles of economics, pricing and demand drivers have accumulated over the years.

The professional qualification in Hotel Management (Bachelor's Degree) was not oriented toward managing businesses and concentrated more on the technical aspects of classical hoteliering, and therefore, the plethora of questions.

What I therefore require, are boosters in two key areas viz: strong business-oriented academic inputs especially in concepts of marketing, economics and basic finance and a much-needed exposure to global / international professionals who, I believe, will be the key to providing a better picture of managing businesses with global challenges, as opposed to local ones.

The tactical objective is to gain some serious, rigorous, technical insight into aspects of business that will come in handy for what I believe is now an organic progression in my career : a leadership / semi-leadership role in the aforementioned functions. If this requires an industry shift, so be it.

As far as the option of "finance" goes, this is a functional area in which I have absolutely no expertise, but, have a great deal of interest in. Over the last 6 years, I have always handled tasks / projects which were either way ahead of their time, in terms of industry practices, or simply not attempted before by the company. Therefore, I have always been inclined toward attempting to do things that I have previously never come into contact with. Finance is one area that particularly interests me because a huge number of fundamental marketing questions are usually answered by applying basic financial tools / concepts. Eg : Revenue Management is a function in our industry that attempts to optimise yields through forecasting techniques. It took me two years to figure out the basic tenets of forecasting, which is very easily comprehended by today's chartered accountants.

Hope the above sounds convincing. I would also like your candid opinion on my choice of colleges listed hereunder :

1. INSEAD
2. Indian School of Business
3. Harvard Business School (Don't fancy a chance, but just 'cause it's a distant dream)
4. Kellogg
5. Columbia
6. Cornell
7. Duke
8. Nanyang Tech Singapore (Lower priority)
9. NUS, Singapore (Lower priority)

What do you think of this list? What are your recommendations?

That makes a little more sense, anisen. You still need to think about how to summarize all that into a 200-300 word paragraph you can use for your "goals" essay. If the 9 schools you listed interest you the most, I would try to speak with any current students or alumni to get a sense of where you think you would fit best. And then work hard to demonstrate that fit in your essays. As you probably realize yourself, the GMAT score is probably a bit lower than the averages for Indian applicants at the US schools on your list, but that shouldn't really matter that much because I doubt there's a lot of folks from the hospitality industry applying for an MBA.

Not sure what other feedback I can volunteer here. Good luck.

Thanks a bunch, Solaris. Have begun the process with the application to Indian School of Business today. Yes, do realize the truth about the GMAT score, but, not too worried as the experience also is a lot more than median W/E.

Thank again