The Collaborative Revenue Team of Tomorrow

As the hospitality industry moves forward — through the pandemic, into recovery, and afterward — what will happen to the revenue team? According to experts in hospitality revenue optimization, it won’t return to its pre-COVID model. Instead, while staffing ramps back up, the revenue team will retain the flexible configurations and operating efficiencies that it has developed in response to the crisis.

In some ways, that will mean starting over. “In a way, what I think we’re going to see is most hotels will be creating new history,” said Dax Cross, CEO of Revenue Analytics. “I have a hard time believing that there’s going to be some point in time where people say, ‘Okay, now 2019 is relevant again.’ “I think 2019 is lost forever in terms of relevancy of the data,” Cross said, “and you’re going to see a slow climb back. At some point, maybe in 2022, the data from 2021 will be relevant again, but still, I think recent trends will be more relevant than that history.”

That new history will use the innovations of the pandemic as a jumping-off point — and continue to evolve, including becoming more collaborative. “The leaders of the future will be very well-versed across multiple disciplines,” said Dave Roberts, a lecturer at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration and formerly senior vice president of revenue strategy and solutions for Marriott International.

And not only sales, marketing, and revenue, but “also across other areas of the business, including finance and asset management or real estate, because those decisions are completely related,” Roberts said. “It used to be the case that those disciplines functioned somewhat independently and then occasionally compared notes, but today, there’s nothing that you can do in one discipline that doesn’t have a direct impact on all of those other disciplines.”

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: Articles, Reports