Hello everybody. I am finding this forum very useful, and I am interested to hear feedback on my situation and if my background is relevant for an MBA.

I have worked mainly in customer service for my entire career. I currently supervise a team of employees in a hotel, but before that I worked on a cruise ship and have done various stints as a server in restaurants. Now, since I have a bit of management experience under my belt, I would like to go for an MBA.

Do you think this is a good idea?

My main issues are that I don't know what kind of MBA I should do and where I should do it. I have found that there is not really any such thing as an MBA in customer service, but the most relevant MBA programs seem to be "luxury" management MBA programs, or hotel/tourism management MBA programs, many of which seem to be in Europe. But the issue is that I am in the US and I would like to stay in the US. I was considering Cornell, because of its Hotel School, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of overlap between the MBA and the hotel degrees. I wonder if anybody could offer suggestions for which schools I should look at. It would be nice to go to Europe for a year, but honestly I don't know how it would help my career.

It definitely depends on what you want to do, whether or not to pursue an MBA.

A program in luxury can be beneficial, but I'm not sure how it would help if you didn't want to go into luxury management. Even so, for many students who want a career in luxury, it is sometimes even preferable to do a general MBA. See Duncan's post on whether specializations matter:

http://find-mba.com/board/general-forum/specialisations-dont-often-matter-42969

As to the US vs. Europe, usually the best advice is to study where you want to work. But without knowing what your career goals are, it's hard to say.

Thanks for this...

How do you find the MBA at Cornell? It seems to be quite general, even if the hotel school offers more specialized programs. Are there others that you would suggest?