Jackie Douglas, President of the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International, (HSMAI), shares her insights and practices that the industry has learned from COVID.Jackie Douglas, President of the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International, (HSMAI), shares her insights and practices that the industry has learned from COVID.Recently, the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association Internationals' (HSMAI), Marketing Advisory Board in Australia & Asia Pacific discussed the top issues facing hotel sales and marketing professionals. Surprisingly, both the issues and the context have changed significantly since the November 2020 scouting exercise.We talked a lot in November about organizational functional changes. Teams were focusing on automation, digitization and cleaning data. They also rethought who our customers were, developed out-of-the-box creative partnerships with goods/services that we would not have considered before, and how to reduce the time it takes to launch campaigns as COVID restrictions change daily.The consensus in November 2020 was that the pandemic forced us to focus more on efficiency and measuring performance to allow us to spend our budget wisely. We don't duplicate work and are much more adept at sharing our skills across functional areas.The leaders of our commercial staff also gave hints as to what was coming. When asked to rank various issues, they noted that the leaders were concerned about their workload and quality-of-life. They also stated that motivation and morale would be crucial in recovering from the 2020 COVID shock.All the issues revolved around leaders who had to deal with functional issues, rapid changes, and a heavy workload.All of us were dealing with a very difficult time. Where the old Normal was a crisis once in a 1-2 year, we now live in constant crisis mode.Everyone was exhausted by the constant crisis, especially November, when it became apparent that the pandemic was not over and would continue for some time. Everyone was concerned by the idea of maintaining this pace for another year.What's the future? Six months laterWe spoke with the Pacific Regional Commercial, Sales & Marketing Leaders in June 2021 and discovered that their focus had changed a lot.We accept COVID now as the new normWe are more flexible, quicker to react and leaner than ever before. We know what to do when markets are closed or restricted. There is no need for panic. We all know our roles and work together to adapt to the circumstances.We are now:More resilientMore agileMore open to new ideasFear of failure is less important: This encourages innovationGet familiarized with the Profit and Loss numbersIt is widely believed that the pandemic caused hoteliers to become more innovative and agile as well as to learn how to do more with less people. It worked! Focus on profitabilityOur traditional measures are no longer relevant due to variations in supply and business change. Instead, we now focus on profitability measures like ProPAR (Profit Per Available Room), channel profitability and acquisition costs.As they understand and work with the key metrics that will drive the strategy, revenue leaders are now commercial strategists.What can hoteliers do right now?When you think about your KPIs, consider these key questions:How strong are your business acumen and that of your team with profitability becoming increasingly important?What metrics can help you price where it is best?What metrics can you use to determine if youre doing something that is effective?How can new data provide more valuable insights in recovery than the typical environment?It is difficult to see the potential in the midst a crisis for hotels. However, there are some.Innovation in Optimization: Explore new ways to optimize function space and restaurants and other ancillary services. Diversify your revenues; Expand revenue optimization techniques and principles into areas that are not revenue-producing.: Explore new ways to optimize function space, restaurants and ancillary service; Diversify revenue; Expand revenue optimization principles into other revenue-producing areas. Talent Development: Help your team members who are still working to improve their resilience, take care of their mental health, prioritize, and learn to say no to requests that could distract them from their goal of optimizing revenue. Build your pipeline through the next generation revenue professionals. Connect with a university-level program in hospitality to provide guest speakers, internships, and special projects for faculty to give them real-Most importantly, think creatively. This will help you, your team and your company thrive after Covid. Cross-skilling is essential for your team in order to stay ahead of the rest.Tim Wiersma, CRME, Chair of the HSMAI Americas Revenue advisory Board and President & Chief Executive Officer of Revenue Generation, Inc., summarized it. He stated that any remaining silos between sales, marketing, and revenue will be eliminated. Industry-standard KPIs are expected to become more prominent in this industry. The future will see technology play a greater role.Jackie Douglas and HSMAIJackie Douglas is President of Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International.HSMAI, a non-profit association that dates back to 1990, is the industry's most prominent advocate for intelligent and sustainable hotel revenue growth. HSMAI, a global membership organization, has more than 7,000 members. It is present in the Americas and Asia Pacific as well as Europe, Brazil, Brazil, and the Middle East.Additional information can be found on our website www.hsmaiasia.org and our HSMAI Academy portal https://hsmaiacademy.org.STAAH originally published this article. Click here for more tips and trends in hotelier news.Daily News Delivery Subscribe to your colleagues to stay informed about the latest trends and news in the Hotel industry. Subscribe2021 Hotel News Resource
