Insights Type: Articles

For more than two decades, Adam Sacks, president of Tourism Economics, has worked with destinations, industry associations, and companies around the world in the areas of opportunity and risk assessments, policy analysis, and economic impact. During this year’s ROC Americas, taking place during HSMAI Commercial Strategy Week, Sacks will present his general session “Economics Beyond the Forecast” on June 29. The session will share Tourism Economics’ latest views on the economy, the mindset of travelers, and expectations for how and when travel will fully recover. It’ll also explore which are the most important economic principles for hoteliers to watch, what they mean when setting room rates, and more. Here, he gives a glimpse of what else ROC attendees can expect to learn in his session.

HSMAI: What can ROC attendees expect to learn during your general session?

Adam Sacks: The economy should provide a foundation for continued recovery in demand. But this foundation has some notable cracks in it that represent real risks. My presentation will lay out our thinking behind the most recent TE/STR lodging forecast and how the industry can prepare for different scenarios.

What has surprised you most about the industry’s recovery so far?

The strength of rate recovery has exceeded my expectations. While there are reasonable explanations, the recovery of ADR is unprecedented as it has outpaced the recovery in demand.

What do you think has been the biggest misconception about economic recovery during this time?

Talks of a “new normal” in regard to travel were reckless in my view. These were especially prevalent in terms of business travel. But we’ve seen time and again that face-to-face meetings are essential to business operations and the recovery of business travel is bearing out this reality.

What is one key takeaway attendees will obtain after hearing your presentation?

I hope to share a balanced view of market opportunities and risks that will guide attendees through the present uncertainty facing the economy. In terms of revenue management, we’ve learned a lot about price elasticity over the past couple years, which has major implications for rate setting.

What are you looking forward to most about ROC?

Last year, I learned more than I shared at ROC. This helped me serve our clients better. I expect to learn again from attendees who are in the trenches of operations and revenue management.

Christian Boerger, CRME, CHBA, CHDM, vice president of revenue strategy at Oxford Collection, will receive the 2022 Corporate Revenue Optimization Professional of the Year Award during HSMAI ROC Americas, taking place June 29. “I feel honored and humbled to receive this award,” he says. “It is a recognition of my revenue optimization journey that started more than a decade ago. At the same time, I thank the many peers, colleagues, and supporters who got me to this point. I couldn’t have done it on my own!”

Boerger has been in the hospitality industry for more than 20 years, taking on a range of operational and strategic leadership roles with companies such as IHG, Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Design Hotels, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, and Pacific Hospitality Group. While devising commercial strategies geared to increase revenues and optimize profit, he also aims to advance the revenue optimization discipline through empowerment, thought leadership, and education in his role as vice chair of HSMAI Americas’ Revenue Optimization Advisory Board. Having lived on three continents and explored more than 60 countries, Boerger is based in Bend, Oregon, where he and his wife enjoy the great outdoors and support disadvantaged communities in rural Guatemala. Here, he discusses how he got his start in the industry as well as how he’s seen it evolve.

How did you get your start in the industry?

I got into hospitality right after my military service in the 1990s, when my original plans to become a law enforcement officer fortunately fell through. My aunt had the fantastic idea of doing an internship at a hotel over the December holiday period. Her thoughts were that if I could get through that stressful time, I would succeed anywhere in hospitality. And what can I say — I am still here after all those years, enjoying it more than ever.

How did you get involved with HSMAI?

I was working for Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group in a regional capacity out of their London office. At the time, I became a member of the European Revenue Optimization Advisory Board before taking on the role of chairman of that same board in early 2014, just before moving from England to the United States.

During your time in the industry, how have you seen the revenue optimization space evolve?

As they say, “In the beginning, there was Excel…” Revenue optimization in hospitality has surely come a long way since I got into it. From focusing on operational hotel rooms revenue management tasks in the early days, revenue optimization has evolved to become much more holistic in scope, more strategic, more impactful, and certainly more complex. Today, successful revenue optimization professionals have to be a storyteller, tech-savvy, communicative, entrepreneurial, collaborative, and business-minded, just to name a few core skills.

As the industry moves toward pandemic recovery, what do you think it takes to be an effective leader in today’s challenging times?

Being able to relate, listen, and see the bigger picture are core competencies to being successful during these volatile times. How do macroeconomic and geopolitical challenges affect my business? What is the state of our workforce, and how can leaders find creative and sustainable ways to address the severe talent shortage in hospitality? How will my strategies and actions impact others, most notably my team members in operations? How can I stay nimble and effective during times of ever-changing customer behavior? These are just a few of the questions effective leaders should have on their mind as they navigate this prolonged recovery period.

What would you describe as the best moment of your career?

Taking a break to reflect, reassure, and recharge during my gap year in 2019 that took me around the world. Time waits for nobody, so we have to make it count!

By Frances Moffett, HSMAI Editorial Content Director

Eric Orkin regularly wakes up at 5:15 in the morning to catch the optimal light he needs to take the photos he uses to publish his annual calendar, sell prints, or simply keep for his own collection. An avid nature and landscape photographer, Orkin is passionate about the craft, spending most of his time photographing birds or in his digital darkroom.

“I just love what I do,” he says.

The equipment Orkin wields to pursue his passion today — cameras, lenses, and drones — is a far cry from what he carried with him when he was living his passion in the hospitality revenue management profession. The college professor turned systems developer responsible for the innovative Delphi Management Systems and OPUS 2 Revenue Technologies spent much of his career presenting to hotels or hotel companies on the benefits of revenue management, during a time when the discipline was in its infancy.

“When I would arrive in a city to do a presentation, it took two taxis to get me to my location because of the equipment — a North Star Horizon computer, a TeleVideo monitor, and a huge HP dot-matrix printer,” he says. “I traveled with all of those in boxes, and a single car couldn’t handle it.”

Orkin’s career as a technology entrepreneur ended in 2001 (his days of heavy lifting long behind him), but the impact of his industry-changing work sustains today. Because of this, Orkin will be honored with the HSMAI Vanguard Award for Achievement in Revenue Optimization at HSMAI ROC Americas Wednesday, June 29. Here, he talks more about his pioneering work.

HSMAI: How did you get your start in developing systems for revenue management?

Eric Orkin: I started teaching in the hotel program at the University of New Hampshire in 1972. I was all of 26 years old, and I taught all the different courses, from marketing to financial management. A few years later, in 1978, I developed a program called HOTMAMA, which stood for “hotel, marketing and management.” It taught the fundamentals of yield management, revenue management, and I ran these interactive, computer simulation workshops all over the world.

Initially, I set out to be a professor. Then as a professor, I had consulting opportunities, and through the consulting opportunities, I quickly saw that what the hotels were doing made no sense at all. I never saw myself as being a system developer, but I saw myself as being a consultant who wanted my clients to be successful. I realized the systems had to change.

Why did you start Delphi Management Systems and OPUS 2 Revenue Technologies?

In 1979, I started Delphi Management Systems because I found I was teaching revenue management principles that were well-received — except all the systems within the hotels pushed the professionals back to the traditional way of thinking. I identified the first step toward profit-optimizing decision-making in hotels: automate the sales departments.

There was an inherent tension between group sales and transient sales. The group salespeople were rewarded based on volume — either the revenue or room night volume, or some combination of the two — so they naturally would try to book as many rooms as possible. Whereas transient sales generally achieved a higher average rate, were less disruptive to stay patterns, and they had more continuity over time. If you sell too many group sales, you turn people away, forcing them into your competitors’ hotels. The core systems — the reward systems — hotels used were not encouraging proper revenue optimization behavior.

Delphi was really step one in my plan for putting the entire hotel on a revenue optimization footing. Step two was OPUS 2, which looked directly at revenue management, with the idea that there would be interfaces to Delphi and other sales and reservation systems.

How would you say these technologies changed the industry?

Aside from the group and transient sales element, I think the main thing was the systems provided an integrated, holistic look at revenue management, which, before then, was compartmentalized.

Also, as revenue management began to take hold in a very rudimentary way, there was a lot of resistance. I was selling people on the concept of revenue optimization, not so much the technological product. To go out and tell people, “You’ve got a need that you don’t even know you have,” was not easy. The industry changed dramatically not just with my system, but with the other systems that were out there at the time, too. But the acceptance was slow and hard in the beginning.

As someone who has seen a lot of evolution within this industry, what is your advice for new professionals coming into hospitality?

If you’re going to be in this industry, and you can talk about it with so much enthusiasm that you’re just gushing — you’re in the right place. If not, keep looking. Don’t settle. Your work is going to take the majority of your time. Spend it passionately.

Outside of work, live passionately, too. Develop hobbies. Don’t sacrifice your family for your career. The money you make comes second. Joy comes first. Otherwise, you’ll just be looking at your watch, waiting for the time to go by.