Being part of the pre-opening team at ibis Kaliningrad was amazing. In 2013, I joined as a front office manager and it was my first experience of working for a huge international company like Accor. It was very stressful but at the same time very exciting. I will never forget the first day when I opened the door at 6am. Two people were passing by and they decided to enter the hotel just as I opened the door – it gave me such a great feeling.

I still hope to repeat this experience and I think everyone working in a hotel should go through that because it gives you such energy and joy, and tells you that you work in the most interesting area – hospitality.

My next mission was to support the general manager in training at the ibis hotel in Yerevan and it was also a great experience for me to work in a different country and hotel. Before that, I went through training for trainers for intensive three days. Best training I’ve ever had! I was in love with the Heartist programme – and I still am – and I dreamt about training colleagues who had never heard of it. I enjoyed working with the great team at ibis Yerevan; I did Heartist, welcome to Accor and brand, implementing Digital Deployment projects and working a lot with HR, I helped to make the team more professional and involved. I was there for three months and when I left they created a lovely present for me, a huge card with pictures and messages; I still have it. I was crying out of happiness – I am very emotional!

In 2018 I was offered a general manager position and I was only 26 years old – I didn’t expect to become a general manager so young. Honestly, I had other plans! I moved to Samara and left my parents for the first time. It was the time of the FIFA World Cup and I had to jump straight into that with a new team at a huge hotel; it has 204 rooms.

My main task was to move smoothly through this important event, provide support to the team and give good service to our guests. However, nothing goes to plan and we had a huge flood because of a broken pump and heavy rain, but the team did a great job, they were very professional at this extraordinary situation and guests were relaxed.

Someone newly in hospitality can develop themselves in the industry; there is no limit. You can grow without previous experience. If you don’t know what you want to do you can always find something to fall in love with in hospitality, and if you are creative, you can introduce things to your area, whether that is the kitchen, finance, IT or service.

What I like most about hospitality is that when you work in a hotel in one city, you always feel you are travelling because you meet so many different nationalities. This is how I felt when I started in Kaliningrad, where there were lots of tourists from Europe and there were many foreign languages around me. It’s so cool!

And to someone who is looking for work, I would advise them to go into hospitality because it is emotional, inspiring and provides lots of possibilities. People who are having difficulty deciding what they want to do and who they want to be, there is a range of professions; you can have a variety of experiences and if you have a target to become a leader, hospitality is very flexible. The important thing is to love working with people.