Tools | HSMAI Global

Checklist: What Can You Do to Strengthen Your Personal Brand?

Personal branding is a hot topic for the hospitality industry. HSMAI’s Sales Advisory Board discussed the issue during its monthly call last month, while HSMAI’s Rising Sales Leader Council recently came up with this quick and simple checklist “to help guide members of the hospitality industry with building and strengthening their personal brand to always stay relevant in our rapidly evolving industry.”

Personal Branding Checklist:

Know your value or value proposition for what you bring to the table.
Find an advocate or a mentor…also being an advocate for someone else could help you long term.
Be a thought leader — share relevant stories and articles on LinkedIn to optimize your profile and make sure you are looked at as a trusted adviser.
Keep up with your LinkedIn! Your LinkedIn profile should be a mini version of your resume and should highlight awards you’ve receive and goals that you have hit. Also remember that your headshot and headline are important.
Network as much as you can, as often as you can:
- Know what associations to look out for.
- Know what other groups to look out for.
- Follow up after meeting someone.
- Pull attendee lists prior to an event and create a networking game plan.
Learn broadly — it’s no longer just dates, rates, space, and relationships, but we now must also know safety and wellness protocols. Get into as many areas as possible, especially if your desired area is not available.
When sharing posts on Linkedin, think of yourself as a blogger for the industry. Share relevant articles and mention why you think it is interesting.
Improve your online footprint.
Market yourselves for the year that you live in. Evolve with the changing landscape.
Continue to take time to strengthen and improve your personal brand, especially as you evolve as a person throughout your career.

For another helpful source on personal branding, the Rising Sales Leader Council recommends watching this video.

Effectively Market Hotels on Facebook: Creative Testing Ideas

HSMAI’s Marketing Advisory Board Tactical Workgroup has produced a series of resources focused on leveraging Facebook — which 70 percent of travelers use every week — to help drive revenue recovery. The first resource focused on how to use dynamic ads. The next one addresses creative testing ideas.

THE ISSUE

When planning media strategy, we often don’t know what will work best in terms of creative type, objective, optimization strategy, and other variables. This is true for all parts of the funnel — from awareness and consideration to prospecting and retargeting. We can hypothesize and guess what works best, but without answers rooted in data, we’ll never be certain.

IT’S IMPORTANT BECAUSE …

With limited media budgets, it’s important that every dollar is spent in the most efficient and effective way possible. Without understanding what works best with data-backed results, we are guessing which variable to leverage for the long-run.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Split tests are easy to set up, quick (you may get results in a few days), don’t require high investment, and incur no added costs. In addition to split tests, advertisers can run lift tests that measure incrementality at the conversion level. Lastly, advertisers can run brand survey tests to assess the incremental effect on brand metrics like ad recall or perception.

Guidance in Ads Manager ensures that the budget is aligned to gain statistically significant results. Apart from the one variable, ensure there are no other differences between the cells. Budget should be divided evenly between each cell.

To get started, you’ll need an ad account in Ads Manager. Depending on which type of test is chosen, you will have to determine:

Which variable to split test (creative, optimization, etc)
Which pixel event to measure incrementality for via conversion lift
Which brand questions to ask for a brand survey.

STEP BY STEP

Get inspiration: https://www.facebook.com/business/news/experiment-test-and-learn.
Learn about testing: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1915029282150425?id=2564729006895902.
Set up a split test: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1159714227408868.

EXPECTED COST

The setup of one split test takes five minutes. You can set your budget as low or as high as desired. Once there are statistically significant learnings, the Ads Manager buying platform will tell you.

Tools For Teaching Today’s Revenue Strategies

By Kaitlin Dunn, Writer, Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International (HSMAI)

Hospitality students who are focused on a career in hotel revenue optimization can get on the inside track by earning HSMAI’s new Certified Revenue Management Analyst (CRMA) certification. To help students prepare, HSMAI has developed a CRMA curriculum toolbox, including slides, links to free in-class readings, individual and small-group exercises, and a revenue management simulator. Topics covered include supply, demand, and revenue management; reservations, pace, and forecasting; pricing; and search engine marketing.

Recently HSMAI sat down with two hospitality instructors who are using the toolbox in different ways: Marie-Claire Louillet, DBA, CRME, professor at Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec, and Hugo Tang, associate professor at the Purdue University School of Hospitality and Tourism Management. They shared how it’s been helpful to their students.

What class or classes did you use the CRMA toolbox in?

MCL: A graduate-level revenue management and ecommerce course. I’m planning on using it again next semester in another accelerated course.

HT: A graduate-level revenue management course. I plan to use it in the future as well.

How are you using the toolbox in your classroom?

MCL: I used the entire thing as my lessons this semester. I had my own material for the course previously, but I put it aside to give students a chance to work with the material for the certification. Since there are 14 lessons and 15 weeks in the term, it worked out well. Because this is an advanced course, the first few PowerPoints were pretty general and not needed as much, but some of the others, such as the probability calculation lesson, were a bit more difficult to grasp. So, we had to adjust the pace, but every piece of material was relevant.

HT: I used the simulator and a few of the lessons to supplement my own materials. I assigned parts of it as homework, and then they hit the key points when we discussed them afterward. In class we made it more interactive, so they can really see the effects of competition. I think that it went really well.

What part of the toolbox do your students most respond to?

MCL: Students reacted very well to the simulation game in particular, which helped to support the learning experience. It was amazing to see them discussing in teams things like RevPAR, rate, and occupancy, and to see how they put all these elements into perspective.

HT: Definitely the simulator. It makes the concepts a lot more tangible for students, because most students don’t have experience in revenue management or economics, and this helps them get a better understanding for the topics. I could really see how much it helped them as they were using it.

From an instructor’s point of view, why do you like this program?

MCL: I believe that certification is paramount to the industry. Particularly in Montreal, there is a lack of skill and manpower in revenue management. I think this is a great opportunity for the field of revenue management. I’m CRME-certified, but the CRMA is a very good first step that previously was missing. I also want to highlight my appreciation for the support I had through HSMAI with using this program, particularly Ricardo Anders of Level60 Consulting and Christopher Anderson of Cornell University, who helped me through the technical aspects and some clarification on the material. It was great to have a support network to exchange ideas with through HSMAI.

HT: I have used similar toolkits and simulators, such as pricing simulations, but I like this one the best. It’s a good combination of lessons and flexible enough to customize the different parts such as pricing or distribution channels. I can change the parameters to suit the needs of the students.

For more information on the CRMA certification or to obtain access to the CRMA toolbox, visit here. There is no fee for HSMAI-registered faculty instructors to receive free access to the course materials. The registration fee for students to take the CRMA examination is $99.

Competencies Checklist for Hotel Sales Managers

This checklist* can be used by hotel sales leaders, general managers, HR professionals, and others to assess the skills and knowledge required to perform the role of Sales Manager — as well as key behaviors and abilities that contribute to strong performance in this role.

These competencies are the “how” that accompanies the “what” someone delivers in the role and can be used as a guide to raise the bar for performance and promote a culture of ongoing development and learning.

Rate how proficient the individual is when it comes to each competency:

4 – Advanced: Has broad and deep understanding and skills, with substantial experience in this area; can apply the competency regularly and independently and display this competency in complex, varied situations; role model for this competency.

3 – Proficient: Has sufficient understanding and experience to operate at a full professional level in moderately complex situations; can generalize basic principles to function effectively in both predictable and new situations.

2 – Developing: Newly developing in this area; has a general understanding of key principles but limited or no applied experience with this competency; is capable of using this competency with coaching and support, in simple situations.

1 – Does Not Demonstrate: Does not demonstrate this competency at the expected level, even with available assistance or direction from others.

NA – Not Applicable: This competency is not a requirement for this position in this organization.

WAYS TO USE THIS TOOL: Use this tool as part of your regular review process, as an interview tool, with assistants to see if they can/want to be managers, and/or as an auditing tool to teach sales managers across your portfolio. Customize it as needed for your property or company by adding your own additional brand- or company-specific requirements.

Competencies Checklist for Hotel Sales Leaders

This checklist* can be used by sales leaders, general managers, HR professionals, and others to assess the skills and knowledge required to perform the role of Sales Leader, and the key behaviors and abilities that contribute to strong performance in the role.

These competencies are the “how” that accompanies the “what” someone delivers in the role, and can be used as a guide to raise the bar for performance and promote a culture of ongoing development and learning.

Rate how proficient the individual is when it comes to each competency:

3 – Proficient: Has sufficient understanding and experience to operate at a full professional level in moderately complex situations; can generalize basic principles to effectively function in both predictable and new situations.

1 – Does Not Demonstrate: Does not demonstrate this competency at the expected level, even with available assistance or direction from others.

WAYS TO USE THIS TOOL: Use this tool as part of your regular review process, as an interview tool, with managers to see if they can/want to be directors, and/or as an auditing tool to teach directors across your portfolio. Customize it as needed for your property of company by adding your own additional brand- or company-specific requirements.

Download the Checklist