Hotels have limited resources after a long period of few guests and low revenue. However, it is not an option that owners, CEOs, and General Managers take full responsibility for all commercial activities due to their lack of time, knowledge, and experience.
If something is vitally important, you have to dedicate the appropriate resources to this and not fool yourself that you can do it all. For example, commercial activities are now essential to capture the increasing demand during the hotel industry's recovery. Only the hotels with dedicated resources will become winners. All others have to wait for a long time before travel reaches the level where your hotel is the last resort for guests that did not find any other accommodation.
Find the right resources
Many owners, CEOs, and General Managers have limited resources for all commercial activities needed to capture returning guests. A better way is to secure these resources by recruiting or getting help from the outside.
Time
The first resource you need is time. If you, as an owner, CEO, or General Manager, have time, you could probably manage many of the commercial activities yourself. But, unfortunately, most owners, CEOs, and General Managers have too much on their plates, so time is a scarce resource. Therefore, you need to buy time from someone else to focus on the hotel's commercial activities to capture the returning demand.
Knowledge
The second resource you need is knowledge. Again, if you have the right and sometimes very detailed knowledge about running a commercial team, you can handle this yourself. Unfortunately, many owners, CEOs, and General Managers got their jobs because of something else than being experts in the commercial field. Therefore, you probably need to buy knowledge about commercial management from someone else.
Processes
The third resource you need is solid processes. You can invent them from scratch, use best practices, or buy systems that create all procedures for you. Unless you have significant experience creating processes in commercial work in hotels, you should use some help from the outside.
Use your expertise
You, as an owner, CEO, or General Manager, should use your time, knowledge, and experience to hire the right talents for your commercial team. During the recruiting, explain the purpose of your hotel since it might be different from many other hotels. Next, define the primary target groups, your offerings that will attract them, and your pricing philosophy. Then, describe the responsibility and authority you will give them once they are on board. Finally, clarify your expectations by specifying the objectives and how you want to track their progress. By being clear on purpose, responsibility, authority, and expectations, you will get a better opinion on each candidate you interview and hopefully find the best-suited team member.
On the first day of work for the new hire, repeat the purpose, responsibility, authority, and expectations, so everything is crystal clear from the beginning. You will now have a dedicated resource for commercial work and possibly even for other roles in the commercial team.
Download job descriptions
For your help, we have outlined job descriptions for Commercial Manager, Sales Manager, and Revenue Manager. Download and adjust to your needs.
For more ideas, download the white paper "Create a High-Performance Commercial Team."
