About
I combine hands-on hotel operations experience spanning luxury (Auberge Resorts Collection) and select-service (SpringHill Suites by Marriott) with hotel development feasibility, investment appraisal and revenue analytics. My analytical work runs from site and competitive-set assessment through development cost and DCF modelling to NPV, IRR and operating-structure decisions (franchise, HMA, lease); on the commercial side, from demand forecasting and dynamic pricing to departmental profitability. I am currently completing an MSc in Strategic Hotel Management at the University of Surrey, having graduated first in my department with a BSc in Tourism and Hotel Management from Bilkent University.
Experience
June 2023 – June 2024
Rooms Supervisor
Commodore Perry Estate, Auberge Resorts Collection · Austin, Texas, United States Held three positions across twelve months at a luxury boutique property, moving from guest experience coordination to the front office and then into running the rooms operation. The sequence meant learning the hotel first from the guest's side, then from inside the operation that delivers it.
Rooms Supervisor
- Led the morning housekeeping briefing and set the day's priorities against the arrivals, departures and VIP list, then allocated rooms across the attendant team in ALICE, the property's task-management system. Work was distributed on a credit basis, weighting each room by size and cleaning effort rather than counting rooms equally.
- Held final sign-off on room readiness. Every room was inspected after the attendant marked it clean and before I released it for arrival: bed and bathroom presentation, in-room electronics tested, and each special request on the reservation physically confirmed.
- Protected the check-in deadline by prioritising early-arrival and VIP rooms, tracing the cause whenever a room ran late (a late departure, a maintenance fault, a special setup) and reassigning staff mid-shift to cover it. Where a fault could not be cleared in time, made the call to pull the room from inventory and briefed the Front Office.
- Worked with an international housekeeping team: coached attendants on cleaning and presentation standards with specific, correctable feedback, bridged language barriers between attendants and guests, and tracked individual pace and consistency to inform how I built the following day's assignments.
- Planned the evening turndown service around guests' dining and activity schedules so rooms were serviced while they were out, and owned linen and amenity stock alongside guest laundry and dry-cleaning turnaround.
- Used lower-occupancy periods to run detailed condition inspections on furniture, fixtures and in-room equipment, documenting recurring defects for management so repairs and replacements could be planned before they became guest-facing.
Front Desk Agent / Guest Experience Ambassador
- Worked the front desk as a mobile role rather than from behind a counter: connected to Housekeeping, Valet and Engineering by earpiece radio, meeting guests at arrival and taking them through the property and into their room.
- Audited each day's arrivals in OPERA, the property management system, before guests landed, catching double-assigned rooms, incorrect room categories and special requests no department had picked up while there was still time to fix them.
- Built upgrade offers around the purpose of the trip rather than around price, since a business traveller and a couple marking an anniversary value entirely different rooms, and showed guests the rooms in person so the difference became something they could see rather than a line on a rate sheet. Generated over $10,000 in incremental room revenue across six months.
- Resolved billing disputes by tracing each charge back to the department that raised it, correcting genuine errors and explaining valid ones, and wrote the shift handover so nothing open was lost between teams.
Guest Experience Coordinator
- Called guests ahead of arrival to establish the purpose of the trip, arrival time, dietary restrictions and any occasion being marked, then built the stay around what I learned, with transport, dining and room arrangements confirmed before they travelled.
- Wrote and circulated the VIP briefings to Front Office, Housekeeping, F&B, Valet and Security so every department knew its part before the guest arrived rather than reacting once they had.
- Maintained the guest preference records in OPERA and ALICE so a returning guest's room setup, dietary needs and any previous service issue were already known to the team, and they never had to explain themselves twice.
- Coordinated outside suppliers against the hotel's standards (florists, private transport, boat charters, wellness practitioners) and entered room service orders in MICROS, the point-of-sale system, including the allergy information passed through to the kitchen.
June 2022 – September 2022
Front Desk Agent & Breakfast Attendant
SpringHill Suites by Marriott · Virginia Beach, Virginia, United States Cross-trained across two departments through a busy oceanfront summer season, opening the breakfast operation in the morning and moving to the front desk for the rest of the shift. Routinely twelve-hour days at peak.
Front Office
- Ran check-in, check-out, payment processing and guest account checks in FOSSE, Marriott's property management system.
- Kept room status in step with housekeeping and handled early arrivals, late departures and room changes against what was actually available.
- Took complaints as first point of contact, resolved what sat within the role, and escalated the rest to a manager.
Breakfast & F&B
- Set up the breakfast buffet before service and kept it replenished, at holding temperature and to hygiene standard through the morning rush.
- Checked incoming deliveries against the order and rotated stock on a first-in, first-out basis to cut waste, flagging shortages before they reached service.
- Ran sales and shelf organisation for the hotel market beside the front desk.
Education
2025 – 2026
MSc Strategic Hotel Management
University of Surrey · United Kingdom A postgraduate programme built around evaluating a hotel from multiple viewpoints — owner, operator, brand and sustainability among them. I selected the Business Plan route together with Revenue Management, Business Analytics in Services, Designing Digital Services and Sustainability. The DCF modelling and feasibility work behind my case studies traces back to this programme.
Key modules Hotel Investment and Finance Hotel Operations Analysis Revenue Management Business Analytics in Services Strategic Management of International Hotel Companies
2020 – 2025
BSc Tourism and Hotel Management
Bilkent University · Turkey An interdisciplinary programme spanning rooms operations, kitchen and F&B, purchasing and cost control, accounting and strategy, reinforced by a sixty-day summer internship and a full-semester internship. I trained hands-on in OPERA and strengthened the analytical side through a Python-based data analysis elective. Graduated first in the Tourism and Hotel Management department.
Key modules Hospitality Information Systems Revenue Management and Data Analytics Finance Strategic Management in Hospitality Data Analysis for Social Sciences
2018 – 2020
BSc Management and Production Engineering
Politecnico di Milano · Italy An engineering foundation in mathematics, statistics, programming and operations research, discontinued at the end of the second year due to COVID-19. The quantitative discipline and systems thinking it built carry over directly into hotel operations analytics and decision optimisation.
Key modules Business Strategy and Decision Making Operations Research and Optimisation Probability and Statistics
Tools & Capabilities
01 Hotel Systems
OPERA
ALICE
MICROS
FOSSE
02 Analytics & Reporting
Excel
Tableau
Python (pandas, NumPy, Matplotlib)
Statistical analysis (regression, hypothesis testing)
Dashboard design
03 Hotel Finance
P&L and financial statement analysis
Operating budgets & cost control
Capital structure (debt / equity)
Debt service & amortisation schedules
04 Investment & Feasibility
DCF modelling
NPV / IRR analysis
Hotel valuation
Feasibility studies
Development cost appraisal
Adaptive reuse & conversion feasibility
Site appraisal
Operating structure analysis (franchise / HMA / lease)
CapEx & asset lifecycle planning
05 Revenue Management
Demand forecasting
Segmentation & positioning
Dynamic pricing
Channel & inventory management
Competitive set analysis
KPI analysis (RevPAR, ADR, GOPPAR)
06 Sustainability & ESG
Sustainability auditing
Carbon & ESG assessment
Equality, diversity & inclusion (EDI)
Stakeholder analysis
Certificates
HOSPA Foundation Certificate in Revenue Management
An exam-based introductory certificate in hotel revenue management, part of the professional development programme run by HOSPA, the UK's hospitality finance and revenue management association.
McKinsey.org Forward
A free 10-week career-skills programme from McKinsey.org covering adaptability, communication, problem-solving and digital/AI fundamentals.
Real Estate Investment Academy (REIA)
A real estate investment and financial modelling programme covering DCF modelling, property valuation and a hotel investment case study. Taught by Steffen Klüners (ex-Blackstone).
Languages
Turkish Native English Fluent Italian Intermediate