Finding your hospitality path and exploring options

50 Shades of Hospitality

Winner of the Best Swiss Receptionist Bucherer trophy in 2015, Judith Malavallon went from working in an iconic BEAU RIVAGE Palace to becoming a teacher at the school she attended in Switzerland. After a management change, she continued teaching at another prestigious Hospitality School in Lausanne. But Judith is a firm believer in having a healthy work/life balance and having children has allowed her to see other options available to someone with a hospitality background.

In this podcast, Judith discusses what it was like to compete for Best Receptionist and what she learned from the experience. She also talks frankly about the position of hotel receptionist and the challenges young women can face in front office positions when they decide to have a family.

Finally, Judith describes her new career path as a career coach and how her hospitality background has tied in with this new position. She ends this podcast with advice and suggestions for young people getting into the hospitality field.

Judith Malavallon has a hospitality management background and worked several years as a hotel receptionist in Switzerland. In 2015 she won the Bucherer Trophy for Switzerland’s Best Receptionist and the contest gave her the ticket to the worldwide contest in Vienna, where she finished 2nd runner up. For several professional reasons, Judith left her position at the Beau Rivage Palace in Lausanne and decided to pursue a different challenge.

She became a hospitality instructor at Glion Institute of Higher Education and this was where her passion for training and coaching was officially put into practice. After a few years and a change in management she left hospitality education and did some coaching for a luxury car company to improve their service, especially at front desks and for after-sale service.

Judith was recruited to work at EHL as a front desk instructor and she trained students in practice and in theory for front office and housekeeping operations.

When Covid-19 arrived and changed everyone’s life, her priorities evolved and she realized that her professional situation no longer matched her personal family situation, vision and values. She spent time self-reflecting about what professional field and job would fit with her new role as a mother and wife. She did a skills assessment at Ingeus in Lausanne and in the end, she became an employment coach there. Her daily tasks include coaching one-to-one with people looking for a job as well as giving workshops about various topics useful when in job search. As she likes to remind us, what is essential is to have a work-life balance.