HSMAI’s ROCET

Registration Fees:
HSMAI Member – $295           Non-Member – $395               Group Discount (3 or more) – $195

*Please email info@hsmai.org prior to registering for group discount in order to receive promo code to use.

Registration: The registration fee includes access to the entire program, lunch, reception, and a complimentary digital copy of Evolving Dynamics: From Revenue Management to Revenue Strategy, the study guide for the Certified Revenue Management Executive (CRME) certification.

9:30 am                   Welcome

9:45 am                   Trends in the Market

Speaker: Veronica Andrews, Director, Digital Data Solutions, STR

A discussion of the economic trends that will impact hotel performance locally and beyond over the next 18 months. Our thought leaders will deliver expert insight, analysis, and practitioner-friendly perspectives on what the future may hold for the hospitality business, what the next economic game changer will likely be, and what you can do to manage it all.

10:30 am                  A Tactical Perspective: What will your Revenue Team do if there’s a Downturn?  Is Your Revenue Team Really Practicing Convergence?  Is Total Revenue Management a priority?

Speaker: Bonnie Buckhiester, ISHC, President & CEO, Buckhiester Management, and member of HSMAI’s Revenue Management Advisory Board

As an industry we’re enjoying one of the longest sustained stretches of RevPAR growth.  However, sooner or later we’ll face some measure of decline and history tells us that we often turn to price to solve our problems.  As need periods are identified (often with less than desirable lead time) General Managers turn to the revenue team and say “do something”!  Although revenue management is meant to be more about managing demand, not creating demand…what can the revenue manager do at that point?  Often, it’s a matter of going out to the OTA’s, offering specials, paying for better placement and using price as the primary weapon.  Essentially, a shot-gun approach that escalates acquisition costs, destroys flow-through, and attacks profitability, which in turn erodes asset value.  But there are better ways if the revenue team is willing to truly converge the sales, marketing and revenue management efforts.  This requires a paradigm shift and a willingness to take both a top-down and bottom-up approach.  In this session we’ll explore new ways to effectively create and manage demand.

12:00 pm            Networking Lunch (Included in registration)

12:40 pm                     Bridging the Tactical and Strategic: The Convergence of Revenue Management and Digital Marketing

Speaker: Loren Gray, CHDM, Founder, Hospitality Digital Marketing

In most organizations, revenue management and marketing are two separate departments with separate reporting structures, technology systems, data sources, goals and incentives.  In this session, we take an “outside in” and “inside out” look at the how the different analytics used by marketing and revenue management departments impact the guest’s journey and identify opportunities to integrate revenue management and marketing decisions to optimize returns.

While hotel revenue management has been delivering “the right product at the right price” for decades, it is ultimately the job of predictive marketing to ensure that the goods are offered at “the right time” to the “the right customer.” Now, more than ever, technology is able to reveal who that customer is and when is the best time to solicit them. Today’s marketing field is a different beast that requires much more than a designer’s eye for sensible color schemes; it requires a skill set that is analytics-based and ROI-driven. Sound like anyone you know?

Attendees will take away: An understanding of today’s predictive analytics and location-based marketing spectrum; knowledge of how the landscape is changing and what you need to do in order to remain up-to-date; a series of questions you can ask in order to understand what internal data is available to you and how you can go about capturing more; several practical ways to use your CRM and GA data in order to drive targeted marketing strategies; and, top tips to maximize and leverage the power of free tools such as Google Analytics.

2:15 pm                     A Strategic Perspective: Data, Data Everywhere – Are competitors more “in the know” than you?

Speaker: Bonnie Buckhiester

Whether you are in sales, marketing or revenue management the same question must be asked:  is your revenue strategy falling short because you don’t know what you don’t know?  Today’s hospitality professionals face an avalanche of data.  Aside from seemingly countless traditional sources there are many options that offer highly sophisticated market intelligence.  The question is…with a plethora of data sets, which ones bring the most value?  Is your revenue team fully converging its marketing function with the sales and revenue management functions?  And are your competitors accessing data sources that give them a competitive edge?  In this session we’ll explore the world of big data and introduce some tools that are not yet in the hospitality mainstream for revenue teams.

3:15 pm                       A Leadership Perspective:  Data Visualization — Telling Your Story for Maximum Impact

Speaker: Bonnie Buckhiester and Veronica Andrews

Every one learns in a different manner.  What seems crystal clear to one individual may be unintelligible for another, almost as if speaking a foreign language.  Revenue teams today have a ton of information to collect, decipher, interpret, and present.  Whether you are addressing colleagues, senior management, an asset manager, or an owner, each stakeholder has a different perspective and, in many cases, different priorities.  What is your revenue team doing to shape the message to make the data more understandable and relatable?  How are you revamping your weekly revenue meeting to fully converge the data that’s available not only from conventional sources, but also from the ever-expanding digital marketing effort.  In this session we’ll share some examples of how data visualization can be used to tell your story in a concise, compelling manner and how revenue teams are re-engineering their meetings to “fish where the fish are”.

4:15 pm                          Closing & Wrap Up

4:15 – 5:30 pm             Connection Reception

Bonnie Buckhiester, ISHC

President & CEO, Buckhiester Management Limited

Bonnie’s career in travel, tourism, and hospitality is extensive and multi-dimensional including positions as Senior Vice President, Operations for a major North American hotel REIT, General Manager for two 4½-diamond hotels, and General Manager Operations for a major tour operator. Her diverse product knowledge of hotel, tour, cruise, air, rail and car rental inventories offers a unique cross-fertilization of industry strategies.

She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois, a Certificate in Revenue Management from Cornell University, and a Certification from Guelph University’s Hospitality Managers Development Course. She’s the former chairperson, and a multi-year board member, of the International Society of Hospitality Consultants and remains an active member of this prestigious organization. She is also a member of the HSMAI Americas Revenue Management Advisory Board. Bonnie is a sought-after speaker internationally, an accomplished author of numerous industry articles, and a regular columnist for Hotel News Now.

Loren Gray, CHDM

Founder, Hospitality Digital Marketing

Loren Gray is an internationally recognized authority in the field of hospitality marketing and has appeared as an expert yearly at numerous national/international industry conferences spanning the hospitality and digital marketing industries. Gray has spoken on the topic at industry events across the US, in Canada, the Caribbean, Asia, Europe, and Australia. He has contributed to publications such as the New York Times, USA Today, Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, and has had articles published in numerous trade journals. In addition to participating and chairing on numerous industry boards and organizations, Gray is a past chair of the Digital Marketing council of the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International (HSMAI). HSMAI recognized Gray as one of the ‘Top 25 Extraordinary Minds in Sales and Marketing’ and served on the Board of America’s for HSMAI’s International Organization.

Veronica Andrews, CRME
Director, Digital Data Solutions, STR

Veronica provides analytical and end-user perspectives in the development of new STR data products. She is also responsible for designing and delivering product and user training to meet internal and external customer needs.

Prior to joining STR, Veronica has over 20 years of revenue management experience in the hospitality industry and is passionate about the discipline. Her experience includes property and above property leadership in both major brand and independent environments, and across a wide breadth of property types and locations. Veronica is a skilled facilitator and mentor, developing hospitality leadership, initiating and growing revenue management cultures where needed.

Veronica serves on the HSMAI Revenue Management Advisory Board, is a Certified Revenue Management Executive (CRME), and an active member of the AH&LA Food and Beverage Committee.