---
title: "Hotel General Manager"
description: "Leads a hotel or resort as its top manager, responsible for guest experience, staff, revenue, and profit across every department."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/hotel-general-manager"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Hotel General Manager

**Category:** Management · **SOC code:** 11-9081 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 11-9081.00

Leads a hotel or resort as its top manager, responsible for guest experience, staff, revenue, and profit across every department.

Also advertised as: General Manager (Hotel); Resort General Manager; Hotel Managing Director; Director of Operations (Hotel); Hotel GM.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $69,250 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $33.29/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $40,070 to $128,880, with the middle half between $49,530 and $94,030
- **Total US employment:** 42,620
- **Typical entry education:** High school
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +3.8% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 5,500 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 48/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 42,620 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $40,070 |
| 25th | $49,530 |
| 50th (median) | $69,250 |
| 75th | $94,030 |
| 90th | $128,880 |
| Mean (average) | $78,740 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| HI | $114,070 | $103,746 | 200 |
| NJ | $107,720 | $99,003 | 450 |
| RI | $106,630 | $104,253 | 110 |
| WA | $101,350 | $94,708 | 450 |
| MA | $97,350 | $92,051 | Not published by BLS |
| CO | $91,750 | $89,033 | 1,100 |
| VT | $81,440 | $83,138 | 210 |
| AK | $80,060 | $78,215 | Not published by BLS |
| NY | $79,460 | $73,628 | 2,880 |
| NH | $79,210 | $76,043 | 90 |
| MN | $78,890 | $79,993 | 250 |
| NV | $78,110 | $78,126 | 490 |
| AZ | $77,670 | $77,148 | 680 |
| CA | $76,950 | $69,500 | 5,070 |
| CT | $76,940 | $74,259 | 210 |

37 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 52 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/hotel-general-manager/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/hotel-general-manager.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 54,800 in the 2025–2035 base year to 56,900 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 2,100 jobs, or +3.8%. About as fast as average: 3.8% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 5,500 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** High school diploma or equivalent (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** Less than 5 years.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 71.6% |
| Less than a High School Diploma | 18.3% |
| Some College Courses | 5.9% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 3.1% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 1.2% |

## What the work involves

- Lead department heads across rooms, food and beverage, sales, and engineering
- Build and manage the hotel's annual budget
- Review revenue, occupancy, and guest satisfaction reports
- Work with sales and revenue teams on pricing and group business
- Ensure brand standards, safety, and regulatory compliance
- Resolve serious guest complaints and meet key clients
- Report results to owners, asset managers, or the brand
- Plan renovations and capital projects

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Service Orientation — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Management of Personnel Resources — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- English Language — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Personnel and Human Resources — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Sales and Marketing — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Expression — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Recognition — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Enterprising (E), Conventional (C), Social (S).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| E — Enterprising | 6.21 |
| C — Conventional | 5.34 |
| S — Social | 4.52 |
| R — Realistic | 2.69 |
| A — Artistic | 1.43 |
| I — Investigative | 1.10 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ESFJ | 88.0 |
| ESTJ | 78.7 |
| ENFJ | 67.7 |
| ISFJ | 67.2 |
| ESFP | 67.2 |

Best-fitting types: ESFJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Lodging Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/lodging-manager) — median $69,250
- [Hotel, Motel, and Resort Desk Clerk](https://nuecareer.com/careers/hotel-motel-and-resort-desk-clerk) — median $35,070
- [Concierge](https://nuecareer.com/careers/concierge) — median $38,950
- [Property, Real Estate, and Community Association Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/property-real-estate-and-community-association-manager) — median $69,990
- [Facilities Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/facilities-manager) — median $106,660
- [Spa Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/spa-manager) — median $69,770
- [First-Line Supervisor of Personal Service Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-personal-service-workers) — median $48,590
- [Entertainment and Recreation Manager, Except Gambling](https://nuecareer.com/careers/entertainment-and-recreation-manager) — median $79,520
- [General and Operations Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/general-and-operations-manager) — median $105,770
- [Administrative Services Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/administrative-services-manager) — median $114,130

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/hotel-general-manager