Rising Commercial Leaders Take on Organizational Alignment and Strategic Collaboration

Jacob Alcala, Event Manager, Grand Wailea Maui, A Waldorf Astoria Resort, Rising Sales Leader Council Member
Sydney Eason, Marketing Manager, The Tides Inn, Rising Marketing Leader Council Member
Nicole Quessenberry, Sales Manager, Noble House Hotels & Resorts, San Diego, Rising Sales Leader Council Member
Olivia Tull, Director of Marketing, Sheraton San Diego Resort, Rising Marketing Leader Council Member

When hospitality leaders talk about organizational alignment, the conversation often centers on meetings, reporting structures, or communication processes. During the Rising Sales Leaders Council discussion, participants referenced the Hawaiian tradition of outrigger canoe paddling, where success depends on every paddler rowing together toward a common destination. The analogy resonated across all three Rising Leader Councils because it reflects a challenge many organizations face today: teams may be working hard, but not always in the same direction.

Rising leaders offered a fresh perspective on organizational alignment. Rather than focusing on organizational charts or departmental boundaries, they focused on the human side of collaboration: building trust, sharing knowledge, creating transparency, and aligning teams around common goals. Across all three disciplines, participants agreed that commercial success is no longer driven by individual departments working in silos. Instead, it depends on sales, revenue, marketing, and operations rowing in the same direction to achieve shared outcomes for the business.

5 Key Themes Across the Rising Leaders Councils

Several themes emerged that reflect how emerging professionals are approaching collaboration differently:

Prioritize shared business goals over departmental wins. Rising leaders repeatedly emphasized focusing on total hotel performance rather than individual sales, marketing, or revenue metrics.
Promote transparency and access to information. Rather than working within silos, they want visibility into reports, systems, and data across functions.
Value relationship-building as much as technical expertise. Trust was viewed as a prerequisite for productive conversations and influence.
Empower leaders to test, learn, and adjust. Several participants advocated experimentation and learning quickly from results rather than debating ideas indefinitely.
Commercial success is a team sport. Sales, marketing, revenue, and operations were repeatedly described as interconnected contributors to the same outcome.

Sales: Internal Influence Is Becoming a Critical Leadership Skill

One of the strongest insights from rising sales leaders was that future commercial leaders must be just as effective at selling internally as they are with clients. Rather than viewing operations, revenue, and other departments as roadblocks, rising sales leaders emphasized the importance of bringing stakeholders into the decision-making process early and building alignment around shared goals before presenting solutions externally.

Several participants noted that internal advocacy works best when data leads the conversation. Using profitability and displacement analysis helped teams reduce friction, build consensus, and make decisions more efficiently.

Sales leaders also challenged the traditional mindset that sales “owns” the customer relationship. Instead, they highlighted that every department contributes to the guest and client experience, from housekeeping and banquet teams to operations and food and beverage teams. The group discussed how alignment improves when teams understand how their role contributes to the overall guest experience.

Why This Matters: The next generation of sales leaders are not just focused on closing deals, but also on creating organizational buy-in that supports profitable, long-term business.

Revenue: Trust Matters as Much as Analytics

While revenue management has traditionally been associated with data and forecasting, rising revenue leaders highlighted a less-discussed skill: influence.

Participants noted that misalignment often stems from teams working toward separate goals, which can lead to conflicting priorities, ineffective pricing strategies, and slower decision-making. They discussed that even the strongest revenue strategy can fail if teams are not aligned around the objective behind it. As one participant observed, “I think misalignment more so happens if there are separate goals.”

Several members emphasized that success depends on aligning around outcomes before discussing tactics. They shared that revenue strategies are more effective when complex analysis is translated into language that sales, marketing, and operations teams can understand and act upon.

The discussion also highlighted the importance of trust. Participants favored discovery questions, relationship-building, and collaborative experimentation as ways to navigate differing perspectives and build buy-in across teams.

The Strategic Shift: Revenue leadership is evolving from being the “keeper of the numbers” to being a translator, facilitator, and strategic advisor who helps teams align around shared business goals.

Marketing: Moving Beyond Campaigns to Commercial Strategy

Perhaps the most notable shift came from marketing leaders, who expressed a strong desire to be viewed not simply as marketers, but as commercial contributors.

Participants identified three practices that strengthened alignment:

Weekly revenue meetings
Access to shared systems and data
Clear agendas with focused participation

The group found that marketing influence increased when teams reviewed the same information and aligned around business outcomes rather than departmental metrics. Discussions focused on commercial measures such as TRevPAR, guest satisfaction, retention, loyalty, and repeat business, creating a shared language across sales, revenue, and marketing.

Another recurring theme was knowledge-sharing. Participants emphasized giving emerging professionals greater access to information, reports, and commercial discussions so they can contribute more strategically.

As one participant summarized, “Sales, marketing, revenue, we’re one team.”

What’s Changing: Rising marketing leaders want a seat at the commercial strategy table and are increasingly measuring success through business impact, not just marketing activity.

The Bottom Line

The most valuable takeaway from these discussions is that rising leaders are advocating for transparency over silos, influence over authority, experimentation over perfection, and shared accountability over departmental ownership.

For hospitality organizations looking to develop their next generation of leaders, the message is clear: young professionals don’t just want stronger collaboration. They expect it. And they see organizational alignment as one of the industry’s greatest opportunities to improve performance, profitability, and the employee experience.

For Your Team: Conversation Starters

Where do we see the greatest misalignment between sales, marketing, revenue, and operations, and how does it impact daily decisions or business results? Recommended Assessment: Taking Commercial Strategy To The Next Level | HSMAI Global

Strategic impact: This uncovers the real friction points that teams experience and creates opportunities to solve specific challenges rather than discussing alignment in theory.

What information do other departments need from us to be more successful? What processes would help our teams align around shared goals to strengthen commercial performance? Recommended Reading: Cracking the code of team effectiveness | McKinsey

Strategic impact: Identifies communication gaps and opportunities to create processes, meetings, and routines that strengthen alignment, collaboration, and commercial performance across teams.

Which KPIs create the strongest organizational alignment? Are we measuring success the same way across departments, and if not, should we be? Recommended Reading: A KPIs Guide for the Commercial Strategist | HSMAI Global

Strategic impact: Many alignment issues stem from competing goals. This question often sparks discussion around shared accountability, profitability, total hotel performance, and commercial success metrics.

How can we build greater influence and gain buy-in when we don’t have formal authority or when priorities conflict? Recommended Listen: How Do I Lead When I Don’t Fee… – Coaching Real Leaders – Apple Podcasts

Strategic impact: This resonates with both emerging and experienced leaders and typically generates valuable discussion around trust, communication, stakeholder management, and leadership development.

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