How the Pandemic Has Changed the Revenue Team

It didn’t take long for the pandemic to disrupt the traditional revenue staff model, which typically placed a manager or director of revenue at the property level with a regional director or vice president working above-property. Layoffs and furloughs have changed everything from how the revenue team is organized to how it operates — including clustering the function among multiple properties.

“We’ve had to reduce revenue management teams on-property,” said Monica Xuereb, chief revenue officer for Loews Hotels & Co. “We were fortunate before to have up to two people at each hotel doing revenue management — something a little bit different than most other companies – but now, for the most part, we have joint revenue management, with people doing one to three hotels.”

Dax Cross, CEO of Revenue Analytics, added: “There was already a trend to move revenue management from on-property to above-property. So, the on-property director of revenue management at your big full-service hotel has over a number of years been slowly replaced by things like cluster revenue management by a team at a hotel management company or a chain. I think you’re going to see even more of that because people are being required to do more with less. And that means the ability to manage multiple properties easily is much more important.”

For Hyatt Hotels Corporation, COVID has indeed led to more clustering, as Cross predicted, along with positions minimized above-property. “Hyatt minimized the teams at our corporate office, and that drastically impacted our revenue team at the corporate level from a leadership standpoint,” said Christen Garb, vice president of global revenue management operations for Hyatt. “We’ve always had regional directors of revenue, and that’s what was minimized. And then, at the property level, there were areas where it made sense to cluster. Instead of a key downtown city having three directors of revenue over three big hotels, in some markets where it made sense, that was moved to an area director of revenue position.”

Excerpted from The New Revenue Team, a new white paper available from HSMAI and Revenue Analytics. For additional information, insights, and tools, visit HSMAI’s Global Coronavirus Recovery Resources page.


Categories: Revenue Management
Insight Type: Reports