Hotels that seize the opportunity to re-think how to organize commercial activities and which resources they need to acquire guests and
customers will be winners during the recovery and in the future. You should already have a plan in place for the recovery. If not, here are some ideas how to build that commercial dream team.
This time the recovery will be different from the recovery after the financial crises due to several factors. Ten years ago, nothing changed in the way we work, meet, and travel for business. Back then, the Internet was not robust enough to host millions of video meetings, systems had not moved to the cloud, and smartphones were not as powerful as today. In hotels before the pandemic, marketing, sales, and revenue worked in isolation and reported to the general manager. Apart from all other duties, the general manager also took full responsibility for all commercial activities as the acting “Commercial Manager.”
The commercial functions in hotels need to become more productive to recover as fast as possible with minimal resources. It is time to take action to build a high-performance commercial team. Here are five building blocks.
Five building blocks
- Build a flexible organization that encourages teamwork in a broader meaning. In the future, hotels need to include their employees, outsourced functions, and experts in the commercial teams. Commercial activities have evolved to become more sophisticated over time and need exceptional knowledge.
- Hire A-level talents for the commercial team. Travel restrictions and fear of being close to unknown people led to a drastic drop in revenue for hotels. Without enough income, a hotel can never make a profit. That is why hotels need the most talented people they can find in commercial roles. Once a hotel has top talents on board, it is essential to take extra care of them and give them the freedom to perform their jobs.
- Automate with systems to minimize the waste of time. Industry vendors have continued to develop their solutions during the pandemic with new features that will increase productivity and make life easier for hotels. Many hotels need to upgrade their legacy systems to modern cloud-based and open APIs to improve connectivity and productivity. Hotels use more than 60 different systems for commercial activities, guest management, and business control.
- Set guidelines and structure meetings to execute the strategy faster and more accurately. A hotel needs guidelines to align the team and to speed up decisions. Meetings are a great concept to drive execution and ensure that everyone is on the same page. Few but highly productive meetings will make a difference and take the team closer to their goals.
- Finally, reporting is there to keep track of the progress. Reports are also vital to understand what works and what does not work. There are many challenges with reporting, such as finding the data, compiling, analyzing, and consolidating. A solid reporting system saves time and will give the right insights to take action before it is too late.
These five building blocks are the foundation for creating a high-performance commercial team. In the white paper “Create a High-Performance Commercial Team,” you can read more about the five building blocks and use the templates to build your team.
