With Hospitality Demand Returning, Research From HSMAI and ZS Points the Way Forward

HSMAI and ZS recently interviewed sales leaders at leading hospitality companies from around the world. While COVID-19 presented unparalleled challenges, they said it also pushed them to truly think outside the box and adopt novel strategies and approaches they can leverage in the future as travel returns to pre-pandemic levels.

The key takeaways? Hospitality companies that remain flexible, keep their sales and support teams agile and maintain cross-functional collaboration best position themselves for success. They also must continue to lead with the empathy, transparency and frequent communication with their customers and employees that kept these communities connected during the crisis.

Read more about the findings in this ZS blog post: Hospitality demand is returning: Now what?

“The candid and unique perspectives that the heads of sales at 16 of the largest global hospitality brands shared with us provided fascinating insights into not only how their organizations navigated through the pandemic,” said Kunal Shah, associate principal at ZS, “but also how they plan to stay agile and adapt as the business travel landscape continues to morph going forward.”

Hospitality company leaders learned a lot about travelers and their teams as they navigated COVID-19. How well they retain that knowledge and evolve their ways of working—rather than rebuilding what existed before—will prove to be critical and a key differentiator. When the next inevitable industry crisis emerges, these ways of working will help weather that storm, too.

“HSMAI was delighted to collaborate with ZS for this unique assessment of the impact of the hospitality crises on the hotel sales enterprises,” said Bob Gilbert, president & CEO at HSMAI. “We look forward to additional research that will provide the hospitality industry valuable insights about sales force design, incentive compensation and other motivation practices.”

Learn more about our research on ZS.com.


Categories: Sales
Insight Type: Articles, Reports