HSMAI’s Top 25 Extraordinary Minds in Hospitality Sales, Marketing, and Revenue Optimization program recognizes leaders in sales, marketing, and revenue optimization from hospitality, travel, and tourism organizations for their accomplishments in the preceding year. This special report profiles each individual in this distinguished list of hospitality superstars, selected by a panel of senior industry executives based on their recent work.
Within the hospitality industry, the need for attracting, developing, and engaging commercial talent has been felt across the board. Among leaders within sales, marketing, and revenue optimization, talent-related issues have been rated highly in polls conducted by HSMAI, and many are still figuring out how to rebuild and reenergize their teams.
During the recent HSMAI Hotel Management Company Chief Revenue Officer Virtual Executive Roundtable, leaders in revenue management identified the following as the top three challenges facing commercial talent today:
In the new talent and work landscape of their corporate teams, these three themes were identified as top priorities among this group:
When it comes to current team size and job openings, 39% of the polled revenue leaders said their team size has stayed the same, while 33% said it has decreased less than 25%. Seventy-eight percent said they have no current openings on their team.
The group also shared a plethora of best practices and tactics that they’re using to develop, recruit, and retain talent.
On developing talent:
On recruiting talent:
On retaining talent:
The 2021 Adrian Awards are now open! Take some inspiration from one of last year’s honorees –VisitLEX. Submit your entry for the 2021 Adrian Awards by Dec. 20, 2021.
For the 2020 Adrian Awards program, HSMAI introduced four new focus categories to recognize the resilience that the industry demonstrated in response to COVID: corporate social responsibility, crisis communications and management, recovery strategies, and talent and leadership development. In Hospitality Successes During the Pandemic Year, a new HSMAI Special Report, we profile all of the Best Practice Gold winners in these four categories — including VisitLEX, which was honored for Corporate Social Responsibility.
BACKGROUND: At the start of the pandemic, VisitLEX partnered with FoodChain, Keeneland Racecourse, and the E.E. Murry Family Foundation to create Nourish Lexington, which addressed two problems: communitywide food insecurity and hospitality industry job losses. Nourish Lexington’s dual goals were to provide meals to people in Central Kentucky needing immediate access to food — and to provide jobs for displaced restaurant workers, who were hired to prepare and deliver the meals. VisitLEX donated $10,000 to kickstart the Nourish Lexington fund and leveraged partnerships with local restaurants to promote the program among displaced hospitality workers and create distribution points. Keeneland donated more than 1,500 pounds of food, which encouraged many Lexington restaurants to donate excess product, and also contributed 100 percent of proceeds from
RESULTS: Nourish Lexington produced and distributed 200,000 meals to area hospitality workers, families in need, and seniors, and 68,103 meals for schoolchildren. More than $525,000 went back into the local food economy, which helped keep restaurant workers employed. Thanks to FoodChain, $86,259 went directly to food service workers displaced from their jobs.
For the 2020 Adrian Awards program, HSMAI introduced four new focus categories to recognize the resilience that the industry demonstrated in response to COVID: corporate social responsibility, crisis communications and management, recovery strategies, and talent and leadership development. In Hospitality Successes During the Pandemic Year, a new HSMAI Special Report, we profile all of the Best Practice Gold winners in these four categories — including the Cost Rica Tourism Board in the Recovery Strategies category. Make plans now to enter the 2021 Adrian Awards competition, opening October 1.
BACKGROUND: After Costa Rica closed its borders to all foreign travelers in March 2020, the Costa Rica Tourism Board wanted to connect and empathize with its passionate community of travelers during this challenging time. While many destinations were pausing advertising entirely, Costa Rica leaned into the positioning of “Life’s Essentials Found Here,” the campaign it had just launched in 2019, to suggest that travelers pause and think about what really mattered, noting that when the time was right, Costa Rica would be ready to welcome them. Costa Rica communicated this idea through inspirational messaging and experiences from the destination, including producing a video called “We’ll Be Here”; developing a series of cooking videos, coloring worksheets, craft projects, digital wellness retreats, and wanderlust video backgrounds, all available via the newly launched Toolkit Hub: Find Some Balance; sponsoring Pandora’s Relaxation Radio station via in-stream audio, display, and video; and partnering with family experience store CAMP to host an Instagram takeover and virtual vacation.
RESULTS: Costa Rica’s organic, grassroots campaign delivered results across platforms. Find Some Balance nearly doubled the tourism board’s average page view time, and toolkit activities were shared broadly, generating more than 222 million media impressions, while “We’ll Be Here” garnered more than 37.5 million impressions and the Pandora sponsorship reached more than 300,000 listeners. In addition, the Instagram takeover and virtual vacation resulted in 1.8 million media and consumer impressions and nearly 25,000 social media impressions.
For the 2020 Adrian Awards program, HSMAI introduced four new focus categories to recognize the resilience that the industry demonstrated in response to COVID: corporate social responsibility, crisis communications and management, recovery strategies, and talent and leadership development. In Hospitality Successes During the Pandemic Year, a new HSMAI Special Report, we profile all of the Best Practice Gold winners in these four categories — including Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, which was honored for crisis communications and management. Details will be available shortly on the 2021 Adrian Awards competition.
BACKGROUND: In 2020, it was critical to ensure that Wyndham Rewards members felt peace of mind when it came to their points and status. To that end, Wyndham launched “Unlock Member Levels Faster,” a campaign that paused the expiration of Wyndham Rewards points for all members globally through the end of 2020, extended current member levels earned in 2019 through the end of 2021, relaxed earning requirements to allow members to gain status with fewer nights stayed, and relaxed cancellation policies. Wyndham also offered essential workers and first responders an instant complimentary gold membership in Wyndham Rewards and a 15-percent discount at participating hotels through the #EverydayHeroes initiative.
RESULTS: Through “Unlock Member Levels Faster,” Wyndham increased the number of members in all status levels; month over month, there was a 20-percent increase in members achieving the next level. Through #EverydayHeroes, 40 percent of those who signed up were new members, making this campaign successful in both enrolling new members and activating existing members.
HSMAI’s Marketing Advisory Board Tactical Workgroup has produced a series of resources focused on leveraging Facebook — which 70 percent of travelers use every week — to help drive revenue recovery. Previous resources focused on how to use dynamic ads and creative testing ideas. The next one addresses driving awareness and inspiration.
THE ISSUE
Hoteliers today desperately need to inspire travelers. They are thirsty to reach consumers who have travel intent to drive both consideration and long-term bookings. Hoteliers need a solution to capitalize on net new intent and foster potential travel.
IT’S IMPORTANT BECAUSE …
The travel industry has been hit hard by the pandemic. Many hotels are not close to full occupancy, and consumers have not yet fully bought into the idea of safe travel in this new normal we live in. We need to inspire confidence in travelers.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine the story you can tell with a truly immersive video. Use Facebook Trip Consideration targeting with video and image assets to reach people in market to travel. This strategy will help you reach people who have travel intent and inspire consideration of your brand for their next trip. It leverages online browsing activity, behavior, interests, and travel history.
The setup is a simple “toggle” in Ads Manager, ideally using Conversions, with no catalog required. Ideally, the KPI leveraged are “site visits” — driving inspiration and consumers to visit the hotel site.
STEP BY STEP
EXPECTED COST
The campaign setup in Ads Manager takes 10 to 20 minutes. The recommended budget is highly variable and based on how many site visits are desired.
By Kaitlin Dunn, Writer, Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International (HSMAI)
The HSMAI Foundation and HSMAI Middle East hosted a virtual Executive Roundtable on Oct. 21 for hotel chief human resources officers in the region to discuss best practices they have developed after nearly eight months in the world of COVID-19. J. Bruce Tracey, Ph.D., editor of Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, professor of management at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration, and member of the HSMAI Foundation Board of Trustees, facilitated the discussion. HSMAI Americas hosted previous CHRO roundtables on July 14 and Oct. 15, HSMAI Asia Pacific hosted one on Aug. 19, and HSMAI Europe hosted one on Sept. 16. Participants shared lessons learned and best practices, many revolving around changes in HR departments, technology, and employee wellness.
CHANGES IN HR DEPARTMENTS
HR departments are not immune from the changes that have affected most of the hospitality industry, with several roundtable participants noting that their departments have been restructured. “In HR, we’re going into a completely self-service environment with technology,” one participant said. “Everybody will be able to do their HR-related work from their phones. I’m actually looking at taking HR out of all my properties and moving them into a centralized services office. There will be self-service kiosks, where you can get in there, go onto Teams, get into HR, and have your issues handled where necessary.”
The participant added that HR at their company is also transitioning some of its traditional duties to managers and instead serving in more of a support role. “All of the discipline and related issues, unless it comes to termination, have to be managed at the property level by the employees’ managers,” the participant said.
Another participant’s HR department is also being restructured and decentralized, so hotels and employees are more self-sufficient and less dependent on HR. “I find that we were babysitting our employees way too much,” the participant said. “Our employees want to make their own decisions and have self-service, but getting people to stop being reliant is not easy.”
TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION
The pandemic has accelerated the use of technology in most aspects of the hospitality industry. Participants said that guest services is one area where they have seen a lot of change. “We’re wanting to do a lot more particularly around understanding guests better,” one participant said.
One participant mentioned a new loyalty program their company recently rolled out. “It’s beautiful in its marketing, but it’s actually a very robust system on the back end,” the participant said. “It’s cleaning up guest profiles and finding better, more targeted ways of interacting. There are huge investments behind the scenes to drive greater engagement.”
While technology brings many efficiencies to the industry, it also eliminates the need for many jobs, participants said. “I don’t think technology will replace people in hospitality very soon,” one participant said, “but there will be a reduction in people because of the efficiencies that technology will bring.”
The participant added that technology likely will make some jobs that handle things like restaurant reservations or room-service orders obsolete, but people will always be needed to run hotels overall.
Along with technological changes, hotels are changing processes and services, forcing employees to come up with creative new solutions or, in some cases, look at older ways of doing things. “I used to laugh at anyone that was doing gueridon service and say they were a dinosaur,” one participant said. “Well, guess what? It’s back. We can’t bring people to the buffet, so we take the buffet to them. We immediately changed our buffets to these rolling trolleys.”
EMPLOYEE WELLNESS
As much as HR professionals and managers want employees to put their wellbeing first, roundtable participants said they have been having a hard time getting them to use benefits designed to help them, such as employee assistance programs (EAPs). “We have a wellness program, and we have a hotline, we have legal advice, mental health advice, and financial advisers,” one participant said. “But quite often people just don’t call those numbers. I want to push staff to deal with wellness and stress and fatigue. Safety and security have to be looked after before people can self-actualize and be contributing members of the organization.”
Another participant’s organization has been conducting workshops at each of its hotels to make sure that employees know what resources are available to them and that managers are able to help their employees. “I’ve been stressing with my HR team and general managers to look for different behavior,” the participant said. “If there was a good performer pre-COVID and their performance is going down and they’ve been quiet or calling in sick, you need to support and help them. We’ve been doing our best to create awareness within the hotels.”
One participant said that it’s a difficult balance supporting employees’ individual work needs while still operating the hotel. “Wellness is a strange thing right now, because some of our associates are completely okay with the way everything is going,” one participant said. “But others have really changed their lifestyle and it’s very scary for them. Finding a balance on allowing people to work from home and allowing others to come into the office has been very tricky.”
HSMAI Foundation: The mission of the HSMAI Foundation is to elevate the overall caliber and performance of sales, marketing, and revenue optimization professionals in the global hospitality industry by driving initiatives that will attract new talent, develop emerging talent, and engage existing talent. Learn more here.
For additional information, insights, and tools, visit HSMAI’s Global Coronavirus Recovery Resources page.
Every year, HSMAI’s Adrian Awards program honors creativity and innovation in hospitality advertising, digital marketing, and public relations. When we recognized the winners of the 2019 Adrians at the Adrian Awards Dinner Reception and Gala in New York City on Jan. 21, 2020, we had no idea that would be the only time we would gather our community together in person this year.
But COVID-19 had other plans for both HSMAI as an organization and hospitality as an industry. And now more than ever, we find inspiration in the advertising, digital marketing, and public relations campaigns that stood apart.
To that end, this Special Report — presented with the support of HSMAI’s 2020 Organizational Member companies — offer profiles of the 24 campaigns that won Platinum honors as part of the 2019 Adrians. We hope you’ll find their ideas and examples valuable as we work together to steer hotel sales, marketing, and revenue optimization into and through recovery.
To learn more about these and other Adrians winners, visit adrianawards.hsmai.org.
By Kaitlin Dunn, Writer, Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International (HSMAI)
As part of Road to Recovery 2020, HSMAI hosted a virtual Executive Roundtable for hospitality chief loyalty officers in partnership with Clairvoyix on Oct 2. Roundtable participants choose the topics that they wanted to focus on; participating companies included Accor, Marriott, Red Roof, Best Western, Preferred Hotels & Resorts, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Extended Stay America, and Radisson Hotels. Participants had a robust discussion around topics of their choosing, including:
RECOVERY TIMING
The timing of when a vaccine becomes available to the general public is a major factor affecting how quickly the industry will recover, but roundtable participants said that they don’t believe it will be a magic switch back to normal. “The availability of the vaccine is key to all of us recovering, but it may not be the golden ticket that will have people flooding into our hotels like they were before,” one participant said.
Other participants, however, think that just the announcement of a successful vaccine may help inspire confidence and potentially bring some business back. “Even if it takes a while to be distributed, I think that just the announcement of a vaccine will start to relieve people’s stress and allow them to focus on their future lives,” one participant said. “It won’t immediately drive people into hotels, but it will let them relax and think about getting back to normalcy.”
“I don’t see this one crystalizing moment where everything goes back to normal,” another participant said. “I think it’s going to be slow growth, and the question is just how slow will it be. I think the announcement of the vaccine will build trust with some people, but the overall recovery, especially for group and business travel, won’t be until 2022.”
However, participants said, the vaccine isn’t the only factor to consider, and it is still too soon to accurately predict when business levels will return to pre-COVID levels. “What’s unknown is when people will feel comfortable,” one participant said. “There are a lot of people who won’t feel comfortable taking a vaccine for quite some time. A lot of us thought at one point that once we got a vaccine there would-be pent-up demand, but I think it’s going to take a while. People have gotten used to things now and there are still a lot of concerns. It may take into 2022 for us to be back to more normal occupancies.”
Another participant added: “It’s going to be at least 2022 before we are getting close to what we consider good levels. The other factor is the economy. It’s going to take a while before businesses feel comfortable putting their travelers on the road.”
NEW MESSAGING
As marketers have had to adjust their strategies to the new world we live in, customers are showing strong preferences for some surprising features, such as exterior corridors. “Those properties have become king of the road,” one participant said. “They are doing substantially better than comparable offerings with interior corridors”
“It’s been fascinating to think about how things that generally for the vast majority of travelers haven’t been preferred, have now become a key part of our messaging,” another participant said. “Those exterior hallways are partially why occupancy has come back quicker in economy and budget hotels that have them than upscale hotels.”
Other participants said they are pushing out creative ways to utilize their space, including one participant whose properties are offering a day rate for people who want to work in a hotel room instead of at home from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. “We keep testing different uses for our space,” another participant said. “We have a few hotels that have offered virtual academies for local students.”
BUILDING TRUST
Messaging has to focus on hotels’ cleanliness policy, which is a big part of building up customers’ confidence and trust in the industry, participants said. “Demand used to exist, and it was our job to bring it in,” one participant said. “Now it’s different. The demand doesn’t exist, so we have to build back that trust to consumers who no longer trust the concept of travel.”
One participant added that while cleanliness messaging is important, it’s more important that individual hotels actually enforce those policies. “We have a focused approach at delivery at the hotel level,” the participant said. “If the execution doesn’t happen at the unit level, we will lose the few customers that did have that trust in us. We have to make sure we are executing the statements we made about cleanliness. It’s rallying the troops and ensuring the actions match up to our marketing messages.”
Another participant added: “We need to keep talking about and sticking to our commitment to clean. Tired hotel rooms look dirty.”
(Read takeaways from HSMAI’s previous CLO virtual Executive Roundtables here and here.)
For additional information, insights, and tools, visit HSMAI’s Global Coronavirus Recovery Resources page.
By Kaitlin Dunn, Writer, Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International (HSMAI)
The HSMAI Foundation and HSMAI Americas hosted a virtual Executive Roundtable on Oct. 15 for hotel chief human resources officers across North America to discuss the best practices they have found after nearly eight months in the world of COVID-19. J. Bruce Tracey, Ph.D., editor of Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, professor of management at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration, and member of the HSMAI Foundation Board of Trustees, facilitated the discussion. HSMAI Americas hosted a previous roundtable June 14, while HSMAI Asia Pacific hosted one on Aug. 19 and HSMAI Europe hosted one on Sept. 16.
Participants shared their lessons learned and best practices, many revolving around employee retention, communication, and innovation.
EMPLOYEE RETENTION
One concern among roundtable participants is keeping talents in the hospitality industry, as many are leaving for industries that seem more stable or offer different benefits. One participant suggested that talents may end up dictating the continuation of remote work beyond the pandemic — or hospitality may lose them. “People are looking to fill jobs,” the participant said, “and that leaves us to compete with industries like pharmaceuticals that have transferable skills and are starting to advertise that you can work anywhere. We’re spending a lot of time figuring out how we move forward.”
Another participant said that focusing more on employee recognition and engagement helps talents feel like they belong at the company and goes a long way in retaining them. “We want to make sure they know we appreciate them,” the participant said. “Not being able to go to the properties has been difficult, so we have to find different ways to communicate with employees.”
The participant suggested making more frequent Zoom meetings with and phone calls to associates and writing notes on their paychecks as ways to communicate your appreciation. “I think that will go a long way toward retention and keeping folks with us,” the participant said.
“Employees are always going to remember how you made them feel,” another participant said. “Even if we laid off employees, we did it in a way that didn’t leave a bad taste in their mouth, and they still feel loyalty to the company.”
Another participant’s company has created an easily accessible fund for employees who are on leave. “I felt that sent a significant message to our active team members that we are in alignment with our values,” the participant said. “It’s about reaching out to our team members in times of need.”
COMMUNICATION
Companies had to drastically shift gears on their employee communication strategies when the majority of the workforce went remote this spring. Roundtable participants said that the ways they communicate with employees virtually continue to evolve. “It’s really challenged the mindset of the hospitality industry about needing to be together,” one participant said.
Another participant said that her company is mixing up its communications by partnering people from different teams to have lunch together via Zoom. “They get to talk humanly about what’s going on,” the participant said. “We’ve found it very useful to connect people, because that was something that folks were missing from our regular day-to-day work.”
One participant said that his company created a series of sessions for general managers, corporate leaders, and sales and marketing employees to interact with each other, express how they’re feeling, and share what’s on their minds. “It’s really raising to the forefront challenges that they are sitting on right now,” the participant said.
Another participant said that while communication may be strong at the corporate level, it’s still tricky at the property level. “On the hotel level, we’ve still got a lot to sort out,” the participant said. “It’s going to be really sticky for leaders in the future to tell employees they don’t have to be in the building every day when we still don’t know what that looks like. It’s forcing us to listen a lot to figure it out.”
INNOVATION
On the plus side, many creative and technological advances have arisen from the pandemic, roundtable participants said. “As we start to recover and come back as an industry, the use of technology to aid and support the business is going to accelerate,” one participant said. “But more so, I think our guests are going to expect that, and I think as an industry we were behind on that. We’re always going to be a people-centric business, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be open to doing things differently.”
Another participant said: “We’ve learned that we can do things faster than ever before. Necessity is the mother of invention, and we have been really able to get things done.”
The participant added that the shift to virtual has helped their company add value to its internal meetings and led employees to want to attend not just large virtual gatherings but even weekly sessions because they have more of a purpose. Being able to see people’s faces on camera is very important to connecting successfully virtually. “We’re leaning into the virtual platforms to be just as effective, if not more than in person,” the participant said. “We’re learning how to deliver workshops to bring people together and split them into breakout groups.”
Another participant said that their company is utilizing technology to virtually showcase its facilities, particularly meeting spaces. “I think using creative technology such as drones and having footage that shows the protocols and safety measures we’re taking helps get people more comfortable and confident,” the participant said. “I think steps like these are really going to help the industry continue forward.”
For additional information, insights, and tools, visit HSMAI’s Global Coronavirus Recovery Resources page.
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