Hotel manager finds talent and makes connections at Employer Connect

Learn about the Master of Arts in Tourism Management.

For Sougath Mukherjee, building a career in the hospitality industry is all about making connections — friends, colleagues, mentors and even future bosses.

Recently, he was eager to be a first connection for many aspiring tourism leaders by participating Royal Roads University's Employer Connect job fair, where he hired several students from the Master of Arts in Tourism Management, the program he graduated from in 2023.

Mukherjee, director of front office and reservation at Victoria’s Rosemead House, was both paying forward the kindness of connections he made during his schooling and career, and paying back the program that helped launch him into tourism work in Canada.

Born in India, Mukherjee found an early passion for hospitality by organizing family functions. Even though his career aspirations weren’t always encouraged — his parents would have preferred he study engineering or medicine — he eventually earned a diploma in hospitality management while also gaining a Bachelor of Commerce.

That education would launch his career at three-, four- and five-star hotels in India and send him around the world, with stops in United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and the U.S. 

From Texas to Canada for tourism education

On the suggestion of a manager in Texas who was from Calgary, Mukherjee enrolled in the MATM program at Royal Roads. He has worked at several Victoria area hotels, and is currently overall operations manager at Rosemead House. The unique property was designed as a home in the early 1900s by the architect Samuel Maclure, who also designed Royal Roads’ iconic Hatley Castle.

Mukherjee hired four MATM students at the Employer Connect event and has two other RRU grads on staff, handling a variety of jobs, from night auditing to managing guest reservations, at the luxury boutique hotel.

Asked about the hiring fair, Mukherjee says, “I love to be interacting with the people and I know that I will be getting a lot of talented people who already have experience in the hospitality industry.

“The students are being trained by specialized professors who are working in this industry, or they have past experience in a hospitality industry,” he says. “They make sure that the students are getting an ample amount of knowledge about how the industry works, what the expectations are.”

Building connections started at school

Mukherjee has also served as associate faculty at RRU and has conducted mock interviews with students to prepare them for work and internship interviews.

He says the program similarly prepared him, and credits collaborating with a varied cohort of classmates for building both his skills and his contact list.

“Every time you have a team project, you are mixed up with different students,” he says. “So, this helps you to know each other, build connection.”

Learn about the Master of Arts in Tourism Management.