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HSMAI recently honored the 2020 Top 25 Extraordinary Minds in Hospitality Sales, Marketing, and Revenue Optimization — recognizing leaders from hospitality, travel, and tourism organizations for their accomplishments in the preceding 18 months. We’re profiling all of them in an HSMAI Special Report that we’re previewing with excerpts, including Gissell Moronta, CMP, Vice President of Sales and Marketing Atrium Hospitality.
Gissell Moronta kicked off her hospitality career in sales as a convention services manager before progressing through catering, group sales, sales and marketing, and customer contact centers. Moronta created the first centralized inbound RFP team for Starwood, which she took from pilot stage to a multimillion-dollar inbound operation. Over two decades, she served in multiple roles leading to Adrian Award–winning performances. For the past five years, she has been with Atrium Hospitality, where she is responsible for the direct sales performance of a portfolio of hotels including Hilton, Marriott, and IHG brands. Moronta holds a bachelor’s degree in hotel business administration from Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra in the Dominican Republic and a master’s degree from Harvard University. She serves on HSMAI’s Sales Advisory Board and leads the diversity and inclusion resource group at Atrium Hospitality.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS: The pandemic required Moronta to reduce and transform Atrium’s sales organization. Her expertise in optimizing sales processes was critical to streamlining the new operation, and her unique communication and leadership style turned an unmotivated team back into a high-performing team.
NOMINATED BY: Juli Jones, HSMAI, and Ed Skapinok, Makr Hospitality — “Gissell is an achiever. She overcomes obstacles that would discourage 95 percent of professionals if they were faced with the same circumstances. Even as an accomplished leader, she still strives to make improvements in herself, her organization, and her team. She has tenacity, a tremendous desire to succeed, and for her work and accomplishments is worthy of recognition.” (Quote from Ed Skapinok)
GISSELL MORONTA ON STAYING MOTIVATED IN 2020: “A constant motivation was generating enough revenue to provide our operators the capital to hire back our furloughed colleagues. There have been so many people whose careers are derailed and to no fault of their own. We have the responsibility to work as hard and as creatively as we can to recover and provide a space for their return to the workforce, whether that is in the form of creating job opportunities in our companies, referrals through our network, mentorship, or simply moral support to ensure we are contributing to their wellbeing during this industry crisis. The motivation is their contribution in whatever form we can afford.”
2021 Top 25 nominations will close Dec. 20. Nominate a leader today!