It will be challenging to succeed, especially in a slowly recovering market from one of the worst crises in history, without the CEO's involvement in commercial activities. It is the sole responsibility of the CEO of the hotel company to recruit, organize, provide resources, and set objectives for the commercial team.
Top management should acknowledge the significant importance of the commercial function in a hotel for a speedy recovery. When the pandemic hit the hospitality industry, the first instinct was to eliminate all costs, including laying off or furlough revenue managers, sales managers, and marketing managers. In hindsight, this was probably a wise decision, but this decision also created a few new problems.
Top talents left the industry
The most severe pain is that the most talented and knowledgeable people left the industry for other highly qualified jobs. These jobs often come with significantly higher pay, better working conditions, and access to modern systems and tools to make the job fun and productive. People will likely stay in their new exciting jobs for some time, at least, until they forget how quickly the hospitality company they had been loyal to for many years dropped them.
Another problem is that the commercial activities in hotels went into sleep mode for a long time. The media constantly feed the consumer with negative news about how much the hospitality industry is struggling. The bad news stories create insecurity and prevent the consumer from making plans and book travel. The hospitality industry needs to re-start commercial activities to rebuild consumer trust to speed up the recovery.
Consumer behavior has changed
During the past year, consumer preferences and behavior have changed significantly. Demand from different segments has shifted, so it is not about just getting back and continue to work in the same way as before. The recovery phase and the future require new ways of working and new types of creative activities.
The CEO needs to take action
It is the sole responsibility of the CEO of the hotel company to recruit, organize, provide the right resources, and set the objectives for the commercial team. Creating a high-performance commercial team is at this moment in time the most critical job for the CEO of a hotel company. The CEO will immediately discover the need for investments in people, processes, and the right technology to make the commercial team highly productive and bring in more profitable revenue.
Without a well-functioning and focused commercial team, the hotel will struggle with the recovery and leave too much business to the competition.
The commercial activities are now so crucial that the CEO needs to be involved on a day-to-day basis to help, coach, and closely track progress. Without the involvement of the CEO, it will be challenging to succeed, especially in a slowly recovering market from one of the worst crises in history.
All hotels are different in size, type, location, category, and many more criteria. Therefore every hotel will have its unique commercial team. This whitepaper with five building blocks helps the CEO and top management in hotels with ideas on how to create a high-performance commercial team faster and more sustainably.
Click on the "DOWNLOAD-button to the right and download the white paper.
