Read about Julia’s career path

• What’s your favourite thing about your job?

  I love working in a place where everyone comes to have a good time. We have the opportunity to make people smile. A lot of guests travel to the hotel for special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries, and we get to have a positive impact on those celebrations. I get to travel and meet so many interesting people. The team at the hotel are fantastic and the industry as a whole is incredibly warm and energetic.

• What are the key roles and responsibilities in your role?

  My role involves attracting more business to the hotel across all market segments, such as leisure, corporate and groups. In order to do this, I attend trade shows both in Australia and overseas, execute sales trips around the country and arrange meetings with clients to better educate them on the product, explain to them how we can work together, and encourage them to send their clients to the Emporium when they are travelling.

• How did you get into tourism and your current role?

  While I was studying at university I took a personality test, which suggested I’d suit the tourism industry. I knew I wanted to work in the corporate space, so while I was finishing my business degree and international hotel and tourism management degree, I started a part-time job as a hotel receptionist and, when I graduated, was offered a role in the hotel’s sales team, which is where I am now.

• What’s your advice for someone considering a career in tourism?

  Just get started and give it a go. The breadth of the industry and the variety of jobs on offer is so great and they aren’t always exclusively tourism. You could be a mechanical engineer working in a theme park or a marine biologist teaching guests about the reef. There’s a lot of overlap with other industries.