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Commercial Strategy Week reflects the convergence of marketing, revenue optimization, and other commercial functions into new and evolving commercial strategy organizations inside many hotel companies. This year’s events — the Marketing Strategy Conference and HSMAI ROC Americas — will provide a framework that will help you accelerate recovery by identifying new opportunities, better aligning your sales, marketing, and revenue optimization efforts, driving profit throughout the customer journey and more.
During HSMAI ROC Americas, held June 29, Dave Roberts, professor at the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University, will present his session, “The Post-Pandemic Evolution to Revenue Strategy.” With the evolution of revenue management — accelerated by the pandemic — hospitality leaders need to be able to lead and adapt accordingly. In his session, Roberts will address the requirements for shifting your organization in the short- and long-term at the leadership and revenue manager levels. He’ll also discuss business analytics, the impacts of automation and machine learning, how revenue management fits into the larger commercial context of marketing, loyalty, and distribution, and more.
Roberts, author of “Hotel Revenue Management: The Post-Pandemic Evolution to Revenue Strategy,” retired in 2019 from Marriott International in the role of SVP, revenue strategy and solutions, where he was responsible for revenue management strategy and execution for all hotels worldwide across all brands. He also led revenue analytics, providing top-line analysis for the company, as well as impact assessment of sales and marketing activities. Over the years, Roberts served in several other roles at the company, including regional vice president of market strategy, vice president of global pricing, and more. Here, he gives a glimpse of what else ROC attendees can expect to learn in his session.
HSMAI: How should hospitality professionals in revenue optimization, sales, and marketing work together to understand and plan for the post-pandemic evolution to revenue strategy?
Dave Roberts: All the disciplines across sales and marketing need to operate as one, and this is truer now, more than ever. Practitioners have to be well-versed in a wide variety of disciplines nowadays. Breadth of knowledge matters a lot!
How do you foresee technology impacting revenue strategy in the next few years?
Dave Roberts: Technology will be key to our success across revenue generation and capture. Activities that should be automated will be, freeing up our own time to focus on more value-added activities. To oversimplify a bit, a human should focus on things that a computer cannot, such as strategy, communication, and stakeholder alignment on goals.
What is one key takeaway attendees will have after hearing your presentation?
Dave Roberts: One key takeaway is [to never underestimate] the importance of clear communication. In my view, lack of clarity is where things start to fall apart.