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The capstone of Curate was a panel assembled and moderated by Bob Gilbert, President & CEO, HSMAI.
The session explored the leadership needed to integrate commercial into an organization and included the following panelists.
- Rhett Hirko, Senior Vice President Revenue Optimization and Distribution, Preferred Hotels & Resorts
- Stephanie Glanzer, Chief Sales Officer and SVP, MGM Resorts
- Eric Kreins, Assistant Managing Director of Sales, Hilton Worldwide Sales
- Andrew Rubinacci, EVP Commercial & Revenue Strategy, Aimbridge Hotels
- Ed Skapinok, Chief Commercial Officer, Appellation Hotels
Highlights from the session include:
- Commercial can explain a lot of the things you do, from communication of purpose and messaging of who you are.
- A commercial structure keeps everything focused and helps refine you marketing messaging, and speed to market is greatly enhanced.
- The commercial framework helped build and execute an outstanding corporate culture – a matrixed, collaborative approach that fosters coherence of brand.
- One brand went commercial over last couple of years. It was a shift that was necessitated by Covid. They made the shift to data-driven decisions and commercial has caused them to work more closely together.
- For another, commercial is a new term. They found it important to not be siloed and they have found the benefit is efficiency has brought. Leaders have to believe it and practice it .
- Commercial is an iterative process.
- Commercial is more developed in Europe and means business, top line sales.
- Commercial benefits the organization in prioritization, by everyone moving in same direction.
- You must have the right teams to make it work to do what’s right for the organization.
For leaders in any organization, embracing the journey to becoming a commercial-centric organization requires leadership and commitment at the top of the organization or within a department. The implications to the individual disciplines may vary but at the end of the day, if done correctly, everyone will be “rowing in the same direction” and the integration will be seamless in the eyes of team members the impact will be felt in term of premium performance and customer satisfaction metrics.