Insights Type: Articles

Keeping the Focus on Talent

By Karen K. Wollard, Ed.D., CHDM, Adviser, HSMAI Foundation Board of Directors

In January 2020, the HSMAI Foundation Board of Directors met at the Omni Berkshire Place Hotel in Manhattan. The discussion included a just-launched website designed to attract new talent to hotel sales, marketing, and revenue optimization positions, strategies for retention, and initiatives expected to potentially open hundreds of positions in hotels and related industries for military spouses. At the time, military spouse unemployment stood at 25 percent even as thousands of hotel positions went unfilled and the national unemployment rate dipped below 4 percent. Foundation board members acknowledged that while the industry was doing well, change was coming ever more quickly, and how we responded, trained, taught, and educated hospitality professionals had to be a priority.

How right they were. When the board met this month — a year later — it was via Zoom. And the Foundation’s focus on educating and motivating talent was more relevant than ever thanks to a pandemic that has decimated the industry with layoffs, furloughs, and closures — including of the Omni Berkshire Place.

During the opening discussion, we asked each board member to answer this question: Where is your passion for talent? Because, in an industry reeling from more change than many thought possible, there is still a passion for the work among the people who do it. Sales, marketing, and revenue optimization professionals have been asked to come together in new ways, while working apart, to plan a way forward as a commercial team. There are concerns, there are plans, and there is optimism about what comes after the pandemic’s chaos.

Meanwhile, the exodus is real. As hospitality organizations continue to shift priorities, many emerging professionals are finding it hard to locate development opportunities or see a career path ahead. Students and younger talent are defecting to industries where more predictable futures beckons, potentially damaging the talent pipeline for years to come.

Even as we face that challenge, workforce issues are shifting. Foundation board members discussed social justice as a key consideration, with their companies focusing on gender and diversity initiatives. Recent reports that job losses during the pandemic have overwhelmingly affected women have been a wake-up call — especially because women are key to any economic rebound and family-buying decisions, especially in travel.

Similarly, board members shared that wellbeing and self-development are rising topics for hospitality organizations. As teams manage crushing workloads amid relentless pressure, Zoom fatigue, and continuing unknowns, wellness initiatives that focus on building personal and professional resilience have found growing support. Team members are taking on new roles, growing by studying or enrolling in courses, or simply stretching into new areas. This flexibility to try new roles has helped bolster loyalty and retention, especially among newer hires who want and expect individualized opportunities to prepare for a desirable career path.

All that said, many Foundation board members said that optimism abounds as one of the largest industries in the world looks toward recovery. Hospitality schools are telling students that the opportunities to rise have never been greater, even if they must toil in the trenches for a while longer. Human resources executives have become key players in their organizations’ planning, with many finding their positions elevated to the C-suite for the first time.

For the foreseeable future, the talent crisis isn’t going anywhere, but our talents might be. Figuring out what hospitality can do for them will be an ongoing challenge — and a continued focus of the HSMAI Foundation.

Executive Briefing: IHG’s Tamara Laster

Tamara Laster is in the hospitality business — as in, figuring out how the business of hospitality works. Newly promoted to vice president of global sales strategy for IHG, she started her career outside hospitality, joining Accenture right out of college and working in strategy consulting and performance management for a variety of corporate clients, then moving to a smaller firm, North Highland, for more of the same.

“I came to IHG as part of a project for North Highland around the 2008 financial crisis, as help with the corporate travel and corporate transient segment,” Laster said. “I loved it so much, I decided to move over to hospitality, because I enjoy the ability to formulate sales strategy and then see that brought to light and see how that impacts revenue and impacts the company. That was really fun to me.”

Recently, Laster talked to HSMAI about balancing the qualitative and the quantitative, creating a global sales strategy during a global pandemic, and looking ahead — short term and long term.

When you worked in consulting, did you specialize in hospitality or travel?

No, I didn’t. It was more around sales strategy. When you’re in consulting, you get a lot of different projects that expose you to a lot of different things, but ultimately, over that period of time, I settled into sales strategy. I was able to take those transferable skills into hospitality and then apply that to our future meeting sector as well as to our corporate transient sector.

What do you like about working in hospitality?

It’s interesting, because people think that it’s simpler than it is, and it’s actually very complex. The challenges that you have change day to day. What I love about hospitality is the fundamental premise — true hospitality is the ability to be able to create a home away from home. But what I like [about hospitality as a career] is that it’s an ever-changing field of experiences. Things change all the time, and you have to change with them, from how people buy, to the demographics of your travelers and your guests. You have to be flexible and agile and really scrappy based upon what the market conditions are. That’s the fun part of hospitality for me.

During your time in hospitality sales, what skills have been the most valuable to you?

Being able to connect with people across different parts of the business and even in different lines of business has been important. But then also, being able to understand how to strike a balance between the qualitative and quantitative. Hospitality is a lot about how people feel and what the experience is, and loyalty is generated by that experience, but it’s also about the quantitative piece — so, experience really drives what you’re looking for from a strategy perspective.

Is that something that’s unique to hospitality?

In other organizations, strategy is all about the data and what the data says you need to do. But in hospitality, it’s taking that data and combining it with the experience, because the truth of the matter is, if people are comfortable in a hotel room, they’ll come back. You to look at the buyer’s experience, the guest’s experience, and wrap that into what strategies you implement. That’s unique.

What are your priorities in your new role with IHG?

I’m the VP of global sales strategy, so really taking on IHG’s B2B strategy. Programs and initiatives for corporate, for group and meetings, and for small and medium-sized enterprises [SMEs] are the priorities for my role. But also, with COVID being so top of mind, it’s positioning us for the fastest recovery possible.

How do you approach creating a global sales strategy when we’re in the middle of a global pandemic?

I like to use the word “scrappy,” but being flexible and agile are really important — being able to respond rapidly to changing circumstances and have your team ready to change based upon what’s happening out there in the market. Most markets are shutting down and then they’re opening up simultaneously, so keeping your finger on the pulse of that and then connecting with teams around the globe and sharing best practices and information and insights — that’s what keeps you aware in a situation like this. That is a part of strategy that I really love, that having to flex that scrappy muscle, for lack of a better word.

How closely are you working with other areas like marketing and revenue optimization?

Day to day, I’m working with sales, I’m working with marketing, and working with revenue. In a situation like this where demand is low, where there is so much uncertainty, you have to remain connected. You have to make sure you’re still reaching out to those people who are incredibly loyal, with loyalty [programs] through marketing. From a revenue perspective, you have to manage and optimize your revenue through all of the different revenue management principles that exist out there — making sure that you have the right rates for the right time with the right fences, or unfenced. And then with sales, there are people who are still traveling. We know that nurses are still traveling, those on the front lines, essential workers, are still traveling. How do we make sure that we sell to them, make sure our product is accessible to them? So, those three functions are critical at a time like this.

What’s your outlook for hospitality sales over the next year or so?

In strategy, you have to look at the short term and look at the long term. What we’re seeing is that the SME segment is the most resilient segment. They are going to return quicker than maybe our larger corporate. We’re also looking at the fact that our larger corporate travelers are likely going to start traveling, but they’re going to be a little bit more conservative in their approach.

I think everybody agrees that groups will be the last [business to return], but the amazing thing that I see us positioned for is smaller groups. We have a lot of hotels and secondary and tertiary organizations that are able to support those smaller meetings, so I think we’re going to see the ability to do that as well.

Further restrictions are going to be a challenge, but as demand comes back, we’re trying to be well positioned to continue to grow the business. I think everybody would say that international inbound will take a lot longer to get back, but we expect that leisure is going to come back first and then business will follow. Just looking at the tea leaves and just seeing where there’s interest and making sure we keep our finger on the pulse of what’s happening is most important.

What advice would you give to someone who is just getting started in hospitality today?

I would say to take it all in and understand there are different ways that people travel for different reasons, and you have to speak to those different segments in different ways. I know that that’s basic, but there’s a tendency whenever you go into a new line of business to think that you have to address your customers in one way. And I would say, remember that your customers buy for different reasons. The experience is so critical, so pay attention to the customer experience, the buying experience, the guest experience. Put guests and customers at the center of everything, and that will help you be the most successful in the hospitality industry.

Preparing for the Recovery

On Jan. 28, Adam Sacks, president of Tourism Economics, will present a webinar on “Preparing for the Recovery” for HSMAI Organizational Members. During the session, he’ll forecast the next year for hospitality and travel, spotlighting the challenges and opportunities ahead. Recently he offered HSMAI a preview of what to expect.

What factors do you consider when you’re preparing an economic outlook in this type of environment?
There are both tailwinds and headwinds facing the economy right now, and then there are fundamental external factors that we’ve got to weigh. The starting point for any forecasting right now is a set of what we think are reasonable assumptions about the pandemic. The major factors that we are weighing in our modeling are: what are infection rates and hospitalizations as we go through 2021, and behind that is, what is the rate of vaccinations? Right now, the baseline forecast that CDC has, which doesn’t seem too outlandish, is that by the end of June, about half the U.S. population could be vaccinated.

You stack up infection-based immunity, vaccinations, warmer weather, and you begin to get to a scenario where the second half of this year could look pretty good for travel. But on the economic front, we’re faced with still severe damage from the recession earlier in the year and job losses presenting themselves again in December in the face of lockdowns. So, the question is, can the U.S. economy prevail through this extended period of weakness? And there we’re factoring in the effects of stimulus, which are actually pretty significant in terms of preventing an economic spiral. Add to that very, very low interest rates, the effects on mortgages and debt, the fact that households have now saved $1.3 trillion over the last nine months, the fact that higher-income households have been relatively unscathed as a result of this crisis, the fact that survey data points to a significant amount of pent-up demand — all fairly encouraging information.

If you take the forecast being produced every month with STR, we’re looking at a first half of the year where room demand relative to 2019 is still pretty weak. The second half of the year we think is going to look markedly better. However, it’s primarily — as in almost exclusively — off the back of the leisure market. The group market we think is going to see signs of life in the fourth quarter.

So, the recovery for all intents and purposes really begins in the fourth quarter. We’ll see some smaller, regional meetings in the summer, but in terms of the the bread and butter that really makes or breaks a property’s year — those meetings, I think, you really start looking at late fall, early winter for those to come back. And even then, attendance is going to be a little bit slow because you’ve got the dual headwinds of companies still strengthening their balance sheets and some reluctance to actually travel.

What is the biggest unknown for the travel and hospitality market?
I think that the biggest unknown is how long it takes for groups to restore confidence and for all parts of the ecosystem — exhibitors and other sponsors, participants, planners, destinations, and centers, and opening policy on the government side — to start to lock in place. And how long it takes for all those actors to come to the line around recovery — it’s all going to be driven by the demand side, ultimately.

Are there opportunities out there for travel and hospitality people who are looking for them?
On the leisure side, among higher-end travelers, that demand has been really robust, so tracking that higher-end traveler — they’re in good shape and very eager and willing to spend on the right experiences. The other opportunity would be regional travel, because U.S. international outbound is going to be suppressed. There’s going to be a lot of U.S. residents who are looking for domestic trips.

And, actually, there were more outbound trips than inbound trips in 2019, so if you swap them out, you could actually be up on a trip basis, because in 2019 there were more U.S. residents who traveled abroad than there were inbound travelers. If you’re able to convert all those would-be outbound travelers to domestic trips, you can more than offset the loss in international inbound.

But there are going to be winners and losers even as we go through the next year. We’ll certainly see some of the largest markets continue to struggle, to the advantage of resort, rural, mountain-park type destinations when you think about that summer travel season in particular. People aren’t going to plan the Hollywood tour or New York with Broadway. I think the likelihood is that it’s going to be a partial recovery, whereas places that have more of an outdoor product, a lower-density product, some of them actually did fairly well last summer and could do even better in the coming year.

Tourism Economics’ Adam Sacks will present “Preparing for the Recovery” at 2 p.m. EST on Jan. 28, 2021. Sign up here.

HSMAI Customer Insight: A Look Back at 2020 as We Prepare to Move Ahead | Amadeus

By: Katie Moro, Vice President Data Partnerships, Hospitality, Amadeus

Looking back at 2020, I believe it’s fair to say that the most frequently used word was “unprecedented.” The impact of COVID-19 truly brought more significant global disruption to our industry than at any time in history. While we’re all still navigating through what it means to live in this “new normal,” it’s important to understand where we ended the year as we think about moving forward into 2021 with hope on the horizon.

2020 by the Numbers – Global Perspective

Looking at 2020 full-year performance, every region of the world saw reductions in occupancy, average daily rate (ADR), and Revenue per Available Room (RevPAR) compared to 2019. Worldwide, RevPAR declined by 60% over the previous year due to a 50% decline in demand and a 21% erosion of ADR. Europe experienced the greatest impact on occupancy, while Asia the most decline from rate loss.

The Impact for the United States

Looking at the United States, the country experienced an overall decline in RevPAR of 58%, primarily through a 47% decline in occupancy and 21% decline in average rate.

The introduction of COVID-19 travel restrictions created the most significant impact on U.S. hotel performance in April 2020 as occupancies dropped to a record low of 13.7%. Occupancies gradually increased following this low point with a peak of 43% in October. As we moved into November and December and a resurgence of virus transmission, we saw modest reductions in occupancy and RevPAR. ADR is holding stable following the increases coming out of the initial drops in April.