Hotel Sales and Revenue Leaders Navigate the Convergence of Their Disciplines
ORLANDO, Florida — Gone are the days of hotel revenue management, sales and marketing each operating in silos or, in the worst-case scenarios, even against each other.
Speaking during the “A New Framework for Converging Sales, Marketing & Revenue Optimization” session at the 2022 HSMAI Marketing Strategy Summit, Ed Skapinock, chief commercial officer for Appellation, outlined seven areas in which revenue, sales and marketing teams all have distinct tasks that could benefit from greater collaboration and cooperation.
Those areas are:
- Finding customers.
- Communicating and promoting.
- Monitoring competition.
- Creating content.
- Managing performance.
- Managing relationships.
- Working with operations.
He noted in those areas each department might be doing different tasks “but at their core they’re trying to accomplish the same thing.”
Skapinock said the best hotel companies are moving those three disciplines “into more of a hybrid department.” He said his company, which is a start-up hotel management group, has built its team from the ground up with the principle that these three disciplines should maximize collaboration. However, even older hotel companies with more legacy frameworks could benefit from thinking along these lines, he said.
“When you look at the overlaps and what your teams are doing, there’s probably some things you can say, ‘Well, you know, we can change how we do that,'” he said. “Maybe it’s changing roles. Maybe it’s changing the process or the technology that supports them.”
PM Hotel Group is a more established hotel management company that has sought to integrate its sales, marketing and revenue teams to a greater degree, and Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing Lovell Casiero and Vice President of Revenue Management Tina Meredith agreed those efforts help the enterprise as a whole.