Empower your hospitality business with efficient sales opportunity management for Hospitality

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hello my name is masam and i've been in the hotel business in the area of sales and marketing for over two decades you may visit my linkedin page to know more details about me i've been asked by different people at different points of time about what is the role of sales and marketing in hotels and i've tried to explain this to them in different ways today i am going to make a video and present it so that it can be stored and referred to by anybody who is interested to know more our business is currently going through a tough phase but it's a great time to take a pause and sharpen yourself with the skills that you can so that you can have a fulfilling career in the future i have made this video in two parts and i'm going to start the first part now and this is going to benefit anybody who is working in the hotel industry already in other departments or somebody who's trying to start their career in the hotel industry in the area of sales and marketing so here we go in this session we will cover the following topics we will look at the traditional hotel departmental format we'll look at the role of sales and marketing department in the hotel what kind of goals do they have and the fun part so let's look at the departments of a hotel there are 11 departments of a hotel broadly front office housekeeping food and beverage service and kitchen these are the core departments so they obviously have an intake coming from hotel schools only but besides that there's engineering and maintenance this accounts of finance the security there's human resources and training there's purchase and stores or materials and there is information technology now if you look at the support departments of a hotel there is an opportunity for experts in each of these areas whether it is an engineer or a finance lead or a security experience person or from the human resources background or an iit person and then there is of course sales and marketing the sales and marketing department it contributes to revenues it contributes to revenues coming in the rooms division which is mainly rooms and apartment revenues some hotels have apartments it also provides revenues for events which comes in from banquets from outdoor caterings from meetings for customers some hotels also have membership programs such as a dining cart program or the hotel club program for elite guests or spa health club and gymnasium memberships and then there are some other revenue streams such as restaurant and bar night club communications laundry transport etc so overall the sales and marketing team is responsible to bring in revenues for all of these divisions rooms memberships events and other revenue streams now we'll discuss the core sales and marketing day-to-day jobs first one being product creation now we are really not talking about creation of the hotel product here we considering that the asset is ready the rooms the restaurants and the banqueting spaces are already there and yet we need to make sure that we reach out to the customer with a product that appeals him for example the need of a corporate for all the visiting employees to the city who requires the room to stay is going to be very different from another customer who needs to spend a holiday with his family so now it is a job of the hotel sales and marketing team to create product that appeals to both these segments and that is what is the job of the product creation team this is primarily the sales and marketing team and operation think tank getting together finding their capabilities and building something that appeals to the customer that they want to target and this is the same thing that happens in the space of events business the same thing that happens in the space of each and every restaurant that the hotel or the resort offers once that is done then comes the point of creation of awareness you have to reach out to the customer with the message that this is the product that is available for him or her to buy which may appeal them so the marketing team primarily creates content uh reaches out to different influencers goes out to advertise and reach to and and do targeted marketing to be able to reach the segments that they appeal to once that phase is over of course enquiries keep coming in and the series team constantly handles enquiries and make sure that all client queries are resolved and then comes the phase of types and commitments where the customer is now willing to buy so he pays a deposit or signs a contract or an agreement with the hotel sales team on a long term use once the business is closed and revenues are booked and executed there is a very important phase where it is important that we monitor that the customer experience is being delivered in the same way it has been committed so the sales team has to work with the operations team and make sure that the experience is recorded and any feedback that helps us to go back to the drawing board to make the product better is accounted for and therefore it is important that we sit back and then do some realignments so that we fill in those gaps that the customers pointed out okay now let's look at how the sales and marketing department setup looks like there is obviously a head of sales and marketing who is assisted by events director cs director marketing communications lead and a revenue management lead now i am going to talk about a structure that is prevalent in a lets a large format hotel multi-segment large format hotel and this structure could be squeezed into the size of the hotel and the needs of the market now an events director would have people who are responsible for event sales there could be wedding specialists and even planning managers the sales director may have sales managers based on the different segments of customers that they handle managers for travel trade associations cooperates marketing communications necessarily has a public relations expert a digital marketing expert a content creation or a social media expert or this could also be outsourced to an agency to handle it and the revenue team has a distribution manager and revenue analyst so the business goals for these departments would typically look like this and this is not all but just a few examples the sales team is responsible for example to meet segment wise revenue goals or improve accounts penetration or to be able to increase price of all the contracted businesses the events team could be responsible to improve event space occupancy increase the average per cover which is primarily the ticket size of per person in a banqueting event improve revenue from the different sub segments that he handles whether it's corporate meetings or social or association meets the marketing team could be responsible for awareness and impressions increasing social media engagement achieve the content score goals of all the assets of the online assets in which the hotel's content is displayed including own assets and third party assets the revenue and distribution team's goals could be to increase the market share of our business increase average room rates ensure there is rate parity across all channels own as well as third party when it comes to public rates now let's look at the fun part of the job you get to travel the world wherever your business origin is from you get to make connections with loads of movers and shakers of the industry you are taking decisions for the hotels long range in short range revenues so you're really a part of the core committee you always look best because you are well attired and you represent the brand it's a nine to six job five days a week you pretty much work at the same time your customers work and you dine in the best restaurants like a guest with your customers so these are a few fun parts of the job which has many many rewarding moments now i will take you to the requirements some of it uh just to give an impression of what are the options eventsteam we are looking at hotel management with one or two years of experience in fmb of operations for entry level for sales we look for business school graduates either bbas or mbas and can they and they can join as sales coordinators or executives depending on their past experience for marketing communications marketing communication graduates with an understanding of public relations and brand marketing and for revenue management bba or mba with high skills on data analytics starting as coordinators then you move as executives become assistant managers associate directors directors general managers vice presidents and even go up to become ceos the the road is unending and for those who really want to put in an effort to learn and grow it's limitless that brings us to the end of part one hospitality sales and marketing career is very fulfilling for the diverse exposure and personality it offers remember it's best for those who love to be amongst people and are genuinely practicing empathy thank you very much