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By Kaitlin Dunn, Writer, Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International (HSMAI)
One of the most valuable sources of information when you are working through a crisis and trying to figure out what to do is your peers. With that in mind, HSMAI brought together more than two dozen revenue executives from hotel management companies (HMCs) to share their wealth of knowledge with one another during a virtual Executive Roundtable on Feb 18. Participants broke into small groups to discuss best practices, then came together to share them with the entire group.
Participating companies included Benchmark Global Hospitality, Chesapeake Hospitality, Commonwealth Hotels, Concord Hotels, Crescent Hotels & Resorts, Dimension Development Co., Highgate, HIS Inc., HVMG, The Kessler Collection, Lodging Hospitality Management, Marcus Hotels, North Central Group, OTO Development, Peachtree Hotel Group, Prism Hotels and Resorts, Pyramid Hotel Group, Remington Hotels, Sage Hospitality, Shaner Hotels, Spire Hospitality, Stonebridge, Vail Resorts, VRI Americas, White Lodging, and Wright Investments. Here are few key takeaways that participants shared:
ON BEST PRACTICES:
- “Discounting isn’t producing better results, but what we want to be looking at is profits. So, I think we had a really great idea. We’re analyzing the profit of a revenue strategy versus the occupancy of rates.”
- “The one thing our group had in common was increased laser-focused marketing. There’s a heightened sense of marketing and guest communications in order to really dig into why guests are coming into each of our markets.”
ON INCENTIVES AND SALARIES:
- “The common denominator between us was gradual restoration of salaries for the properties, not necessarily for us in the executive levels. We still haven’t gotten there yet with restoring our salaries, but incentives have been restored at the property levels just to keep that motivation going.”
- “We switched from what full service and select service were doing. So, full service actually has real sales goals, where select service is more about just total hotel budget goals. And then there’s got to be sort of a baseline that if you’re still negative of, you don’t qualify for anything. And then looking at market share, we’re basing it on an average of past three years with 2020 out of it, because all of this data we’re going to have for a while is pretty bad.”
- “We eliminated quarterly incentive plans. Some of our team members that work remotely are not getting exposed to the hardships of these hotels. And so, when they’re like, ‘Why am I not getting an incentive?,’ it’s wise to let them experience what’s going at the properties.”
ON STAFFING:
- “The hotels that were lucky enough to keep sales staff on through all of this this are really winning. Even though it might just be one more group than what you’re getting, it’s a massive game changer right now.”
- “One person in our group mentioned creating an inventory specialist position, which I thought was kind of new. Maybe out of this we create a new position that’s really inventory and managing the blocks. That could be an opportunity.”
ON MARKET INTELLEGENCE SOURCES:
- “We all agreed that Demand360 continues to be the go-to source of business intelligence pre- and post-COVID.”
- “One person mentioned using Expedia Rev+, which wasn’t available to all properties before but now it is, which is great. Another one that a lot of people are using is OTA Insight. And we’re lucky we use Nolan Analytics, which has really helped with a lot of due diligence and some market analysis.”