Bennett Hospitality Internship 2015
Four final year students from the DCU Business School will complete a ten-week internship in the Bennett Hospitality Company in Charleston, South Carolina this summer.
On 15th June, Elizabeth Daly Ni Bhroin, Niamh Hussey, Ian Kennedy and Karl Cummins will join a unique programme coordinated by Bennett Hospitality and Hilton Worldwide designed to give DCU students valuable industry experience as they begin their post-university job search.
The internship programme was established in 2009 by Mike Bennett, founder of Bennett Hospitality and Trustee of the DCU Educational Trust. Mr. Bennett, who grew his business from a bicycle rental company in 1977 to an organisation running 16 hotels and 8 restaurants today, created the programme to give students insight into the skills required to run a successful business.
Interns learn the ropes of the hotel industry by rotating through a variety of departments, including marketing and sales, finance and human resources. Participants also get to grips with the day-to-day essentials of running a hotel while working at the front desk and alongside the housekeeping and maintenance teams.
The experience is one that students use as a springboard for rewarding careers both in the hotel sector and elsewhere. Previous interns went on to work in companies as diverse as Google, Allianz Insurance and SQS Group.
Sean Sinclair, who took part in the programme in 2010, progressed to a management training programme with Hilton and worked for the company in Istanbul, London and Amsterdam before taking up the position of Front of House Manager in Hilton Dublin in Charlemont Place. He commented “My time in Bennett Hospitality opened up professional networks to me and allowed me to prove my skills in the workplace, giving me an advantage in a competitive graduate market that I otherwise would not have had.”