Insights Type: Thought Leadership

Optimized to Fail: Research on the Future of Revenue Management

Tess McGoldrick, Senior Director Product Enablement, Lighthouse, HSMAI Sales Advisory Board Member
This article is a summary of Dr. Breffni Noone & Dr. Sherri Kimes’ presentation at the recent HSMAI Commercial Strategy Conference.

The provocative title is intentional — this research-backed session challenged a core assumption: that better tools produce better decisions. Based on 22 interviews and 194 surveys across hoteliers, owners, asset managers, vendors, and consultants, the answer is no.

Why It Matters

The industry has invested heavily in RMS, forecasting, dashboards, and AI — and manual overrides are still rampant, data is still fragmented, and profit is still inconsistently optimized. More capability has not translated into better decisions. The problem isn’t execution. It’s system design.

Key Insights

The data is striking: 54% of respondents override their RMS regularly, 79% describe their tech stack as poorly or critically fragmented, and just 1% say their data is well integrated. Meanwhile, 47% still measure success primarily through RevPAR — versus only 24% who prioritize profitability.

The shift to ‘Commercial’ integration happened at the title level, not the structural level. RM, Sales, and Marketing may share an org chart, but incentives and ways of working remained siloed. As one interviewee put it: “We all just have more meetings about the silos now.

Revenue Management has quietly become a coordination function — balancing revenue vs. profit, reconciling owner and operator expectations, and interpreting conflicting data — without being given the authority or accountability to match. AI won’t fix this. It will accelerate whatever system you already have, broken or not.

Next Steps (or homework as the professors would say)

  • Compare what RM is expected to optimize with what is actually measured and rewarded. Review scorecards, incentive plans, and KPIs — and ask whether profitability influences decisions or just appears in reports.
  • Map RM’s actual decision authority against its expected influence. Find one recent decision where RM shaped the outcome but didn’t own accountability.
  • Ask whether your organization has invested as much in executing decisions as in generating insights — and whether the gap is analytical, organizational, or structural.

Rising Commercial Leaders Take on Organizational Alignment and Strategic Collaboration

Jacob Alcala, Event Manager, Grand Wailea Maui, A Waldorf Astoria Resort, Rising Sales Leader Council Member
Sydney Eason, Marketing Manager, The Tides Inn, Rising Marketing Leader Council Member
Nicole Quessenberry, Sales Manager, Noble House Hotels & Resorts, San Diego, Rising Sales Leader Council Member
Olivia Tull, Director of Marketing, Sheraton San Diego Resort, Rising Marketing Leader Council Member

When hospitality leaders talk about organizational alignment, the conversation often centers on meetings, reporting structures, or communication processes.  During the Rising Sales Leaders Council discussion, participants referenced the Hawaiian tradition of outrigger canoe paddling, where success depends on every paddler rowing together toward a common destination. The analogy resonated across all three Rising Leader Councils because it reflects a challenge many organizations face today: teams may be working hard, but not always in the same direction.

Rising leaders offered a fresh perspective on organizational alignment. Rather than focusing on organizational charts or departmental boundaries, they focused on the human side of collaboration: building trust, sharing knowledge, creating transparency, and aligning teams around common goals. Across all three disciplines, participants agreed that commercial success is no longer driven by individual departments working in silos. Instead, it depends on sales, revenue, marketing, and operations rowing in the same direction to achieve shared outcomes for the business.

5 Key Themes Across the Rising Leaders Councils

Several themes emerged that reflect how emerging professionals are approaching collaboration differently:

  1. Prioritize shared business goals over departmental wins. Rising leaders repeatedly emphasized focusing on total hotel performance rather than individual sales, marketing, or revenue metrics.
  2. Promote transparency and access to information. Rather than working within silos, they want visibility into reports, systems, and data across functions.
  3. Value relationship-building as much as technical expertise. Trust was viewed as a prerequisite for productive conversations and influence.
  4. Empower leaders to test, learn, and adjust. Several participants advocated experimentation and learning quickly from results rather than debating ideas indefinitely.
  5. Commercial success is a team sport. Sales, marketing, revenue, and operations were repeatedly described as interconnected contributors to the same outcome.

Sales: Internal Influence Is Becoming a Critical Leadership Skill

One of the strongest insights from rising sales leaders was that future commercial leaders must be just as effective at selling internally as they are with clients. Rather than viewing operations, revenue, and other departments as roadblocks, rising sales leaders emphasized the importance of bringing stakeholders into the decision-making process early and building alignment around shared goals before presenting solutions externally.

Several participants noted that internal advocacy works best when data leads the conversation. Using profitability and displacement analysis helped teams reduce friction, build consensus, and make decisions more efficiently.

Sales leaders also challenged the traditional mindset that sales “owns” the customer relationship. Instead, they highlighted that every department contributes to the guest and client experience, from housekeeping and banquet teams to operations and food and beverage teams. The group discussed how alignment improves when teams understand how their role contributes to the overall guest experience.

Why This Matters: The next generation of sales leaders are not just focused on closing deals, but also on creating organizational buy-in that supports profitable, long-term business.

Revenue: Trust Matters as Much as Analytics

While revenue management has traditionally been associated with data and forecasting, rising revenue leaders highlighted a less-discussed skill: influence.

Participants noted that misalignment often stems from teams working toward separate goals, which can lead to conflicting priorities, ineffective pricing strategies, and slower decision-making. They discussed that even the strongest revenue strategy can fail if teams are not aligned around the objective behind it. As one participant observed, “I think misalignment more so happens if there are separate goals.”

Several members emphasized that success depends on aligning around outcomes before discussing tactics. They shared that revenue strategies are more effective when complex analysis is translated into language that sales, marketing, and operations teams can understand and act upon.

The discussion also highlighted the importance of trust. Participants favored discovery questions, relationship-building, and collaborative experimentation as ways to navigate differing perspectives and build buy-in across teams.

The Strategic Shift: Revenue leadership is evolving from being the “keeper of the numbers” to being a translator, facilitator, and strategic advisor who helps teams align around shared business goals.

Marketing: Moving Beyond Campaigns to Commercial Strategy

Perhaps the most notable shift came from marketing leaders, who expressed a strong desire to be viewed not simply as marketers, but as commercial contributors.

Participants identified three practices that strengthened alignment:

  • Weekly revenue meetings
  • Access to shared systems and data
  • Clear agendas with focused participation

The group found that marketing influence increased when teams reviewed the same information and aligned around business outcomes rather than departmental metrics. Discussions focused on commercial measures such as TRevPAR, guest satisfaction, retention, loyalty, and repeat business, creating a shared language across sales, revenue, and marketing.

Another recurring theme was knowledge-sharing. Participants emphasized giving emerging professionals greater access to information, reports, and commercial discussions so they can contribute more strategically.

As one participant summarized, “Sales, marketing, revenue, we’re one team.”

What’s Changing: Rising marketing leaders want a seat at the commercial strategy table and are increasingly measuring success through business impact, not just marketing activity.

The Bottom Line

The most valuable takeaway from these discussions is that rising leaders are advocating for transparency over silos, influence over authority, experimentation over perfection, and shared accountability over departmental ownership.

For hospitality organizations looking to develop their next generation of leaders, the message is clear: young professionals don’t just want stronger collaboration. They expect it. And they see organizational alignment as one of the industry’s greatest opportunities to improve performance, profitability, and the employee experience.

For Your Team: Conversation Starters

  1. Where do we see the greatest misalignment between sales, marketing, revenue, and operations, and how does it impact daily decisions or business results? Recommended Assessment: Taking Commercial Strategy To The Next Level | HSMAI Global
  • Strategic impact: This uncovers the real friction points that teams experience and creates opportunities to solve specific challenges rather than discussing alignment in theory.
  1. What information do other departments need from us to be more successful? What processes would help our teams align around shared goals to strengthen commercial performance? Recommended Reading: Cracking the code of team effectiveness | McKinsey
  • Strategic impact: Identifies communication gaps and opportunities to create processes, meetings, and routines that strengthen alignment, collaboration, and commercial performance across teams.
  1. Which KPIs create the strongest organizational alignment? Are we measuring success the same way across departments, and if not, should we be? Recommended Reading: A KPIs Guide for the Commercial Strategist | HSMAI Global
  • Strategic impact: Many alignment issues stem from competing goals. This question often sparks discussion around shared accountability, profitability, total hotel performance, and commercial success metrics.
  1. How can we build greater influence and gain buy-in when we don’t have formal authority or when priorities conflict? Recommended Listen: How Do I Lead When I Don’t Fee… – Coaching Real Leaders – Apple Podcasts
  • Strategic impact: This resonates with both emerging and experienced leaders and typically generates valuable discussion around trust, communication, stakeholder management, and leadership development.

Other Recommended readings

Commercial Alignment in Action: A Conference Workshop Recap

Amy Infante, Founder and Co-Founder, GitGO, HSMAI Sales Advisory Board Member 

Kim Snow, VP Commercial Strategy, Ambridge, HSMAI Sales Advisory Board Member

Commercial alignment remains one of the hospitality industry’s most discussed challenges, yet many organizations still struggle to turn strategy into execution. Sales, revenue management, marketing, and distribution teams often share the same goals but operate with different priorities, metrics, and communication rhythms. The result can be slower decision-making, unclear accountability, and missed revenue opportunities. This interactive workshop combined practical discussion with hands-on exercises designed to help participants identify alignment gaps, establish accountability, and build operating processes that drive results. 

A key theme of the session was that most execution issues are not caused by poor strategy. More often, they stem from three common challenges: too many priorities competing for attention, unclear ownership of critical outcomes, and meeting structures that prioritize reporting over action. When commercial teams lack clarity around what matters most and who is accountable for results, execution naturally slows and opportunities are missed. 

To address these challenges, participants were introduced to the C.O.R.E. Framework—Clarity, Ownership, Rhythm, and Execution. Presented as the minimum operating rhythm a commercial team needs, the framework holds that when any one element breaks down, execution slows, regardless of how strong the strategy is. The framework provides a practical approach for aligning commercial teams around a focused set of priorities, clearly defining accountability, creating a consistent operating cadence, and connecting actions to measurable business outcomes. Through interactive exercises, attendees explored how simplifying priorities and structuring decision-making can improve organizational effectiveness and accelerate results. 

The first exercise focused on building a commercial scoreboard. Teams were challenged to narrow their metrics to a focused set of five to seven KPIs, assign a single owner to each, and balance results measures (lagging indicators such as RevPAR Index, Total Revenue, Net ADR, or GOPPAR) with driver measures (leading indicators such as group pace, lead-to-definite, website conversion, or negotiated production). For every KPI, teams defined what it measures, who owns it, how often it is reviewed, and the trigger that flags it as off-track. A guiding test kept the exercise grounded: if a KPI turns red, does the team know what decision to make on Monday morning? If a metric does not change a decision, it does not belong on the scoreboard. 

The workshop also examined the importance of decision rights. Many commercial initiatives stall because teams are uncertain who owns a decision, who provides input, and who is responsible for implementation. Establishing clear accountability models, using a simple tool such as RACI or DACI to make the accountable role explicit, reduces friction, improves collaboration, and increases organizational speed. Participants worked through exercises focused on KPI selection, ownership mapping, and communication cadence design to help translate these concepts into practical applications. 

The communication rhythm exercise gave teams a practical cadence to use: a short Weekly Pulse focused only on off-track items and the decisions they require, a Monthly Review for trends and cross-functional alignment, and a Quarterly Reset to reconfirm priorities, reallocate resources, and decide what to stop doing. The governing rule was simple: meetings exist to decide and unblock, while routine reporting moves to pre-reads and automation. Green metrics do not need discussion, and if something is not a decision or an obstacle, it belongs in an email. 

Finally, the session explored how AI can support execution by reducing the time spent gathering information, preparing reports, and identifying performance trends. As technology automates more routine analysis, leaders have greater opportunity to focus on coaching teams, removing obstacles, making decisions, and driving action. 

Recommended Next Steps

  • Build a focused scoreboard of five to seven KPIs that balances lagging results with leading drivers, and name one owner for each. Format every commitment as Action, Owner, and By When. 
  • Map one real decision or KPI using RACI (or DACI) so the accountable owner is clear and handoffs across sales, marketing, revenue management, and distribution stop creating friction. 
  • Choose one meeting to change or eliminate, move its reporting to a pre-read, and set a date for your first Weekly Pulse. 
  • Pick one AI use case to pilot in the next 30 days that saves preparation time or improves decision quality. 

Ultimately, the session reinforced a simple but important truth: strategy establishes direction, but execution rhythm determines results. Organizations that create clarity around priorities, ownership, and decision-making are better positioned to move faster, adapt more effectively, and deliver stronger commercial performance.

CSC Session Recap

From Disjointed to Dynamic: Hotel Marketing Framework for Commercial Performance 

Kimberly Erwin, Principal at Lotus Marketing, HSMAI Marketing Advisory Board Member

This article recaps my session at HSMAI’s Commercial Strategy Session, where I shared the work Lotus Marketing has undertaken to create a strategic marketing framework. Our work connects how strategy should drive revenue, to align teams, vendors, and systems to make marketing more effective.  

The hotel marketing framework helps hotels understand, prioritize, and continuously improve their marketing for maximum impact. Built around five core pillars, it creates momentum by revealing where focus and refinement will drive the greatest results.  

  1. Foundation establishes who the hotel is and who it represents. This is the strategic core of the framework and defines the hotel’s identity, narrative, values, and differentiation, and translates them into clear visual and verbal standards.

  2. Alignment defines what the hotel is trying to achieve commercially. This pillar connects the brand foundation to real business objectives, ensuring marketing efforts are driven by measurable goals rather than just activity. Alignment ensures that marketing, sales, revenue management, and leadership are working toward the same outcomes, using shared priorities and a common understanding of success.

  3. Expression governs how the brand shows up across every touchpoint. This pillar ensures that all guest-facing materials and channels consistently reflect the hotel’s identity and commercial intent. In a world where guests evaluate hotels across dozens of platforms, consistency is not optional.

  4. Immersion defines why guests will remember their stay. This is where marketing moves beyond communication and becomes tangible. Immersion translates brand promise into experience through programming, amenities, activations, and moments that guests can feel.

  5. Outreach determines where the brand reaches and influences beyond the hotel itself. This pillar extends the hotel’s presence through partnerships, community engagement, media, and third-party advocacy.

When the pillars are strengthened in sequence, momentum begins to build naturally because each layer reinforces and amplifies the one before it. As each pillar compounds the next, marketing becomes more effective. The narrative is clear, priorities are defined, and campaigns require less reinvention because they are grounded in strategy rather than reaction. Resources are used more efficiently, and the guest experience reinforces the brand promise. 

In this environment, marketing shifts from a series of disconnected efforts to a coordinated system where each action builds on the last. In other words, hotel marketing stops behaving like a perishable expense and becomes a compounding asset. 

Take the hotel marketing assessment tool to evaluate hotel marketing effectiveness: https://iq.lotusmarketinginc.com/lotusiq 

The tool translates the five pillars into clear criteria that reveal where the hotel is strong, where gaps exist, and what actions should be prioritized. It enables hoteliers to benchmark marketing performance, diagnose root issues, and identify the priorities that will deliver the greatest commercial impact.

10 Actions Commercial Leaders Should Take Now

A few weeks ago in San Antonio, over 1,000 hospitality commercial professionals attended the HSMAI Commercial Strategy Conference 2026. One theme of the conference was that commercial strategy is moving upstream into discovery, recommendation, and influence.  

Here are ten actions to take now. 

  1. Expand your lens beyond traditional search
    Test how your properties appear in AI tools, not just search engines. 

Why it matters:
Customer discovery is shifting upstream.
Decisions are increasingly shaped before a traveler ever reaches traditional search. 

  1. Treat AI Visibility as a Cross-Functional Priority

    Align marketing, revenue, distribution, and tech around AI-driven demand capture with shared ownership.

Why it matters:
No single team owns this. Execution fails without a common language and shared goals. 

  1. Reframe distribution strategy around decision influence.

    Re-evaluate your distribution strategy based on where decisions are influenced, not just where bookings are processed.

Why it matters:

Control is moving to recommendation layers, not booking endpoints. This will give you more pricing power, better partner strategy, and stronger long-term positioning. 

  1. Run Small, Controlled Experiments—Now
    Pick 1–2 priority areas (AI, pricing, or distribution) and launch controlled testsimmediately. 

Why it matters:
Waiting for perfect information slows progress, while structured experimentation accelerates learning.  

  1. Track Both Visibility and Conversion
    Measure both:
    • Output metrics (e.g., AI mentions, rankings) 
    • Outcome metrics (e.g., conversion, revenue) 

Why it matters:

New channels require new measurement frameworks. Visibility without conversion is noise; conversion without visibility is fragile. This will give you clearer ROI, better prioritization, and fewer blind spots in decision-making. 

  1. Recalculate True Cost of Acquisition
    Fully load channel costsincluding fees, commissions, and marketing and evaluate net contribution. 

Why it matters:

Topline revenue can mask margin erosion, especially as distribution becomes more complex. The impact will be improved profitability, smarter channel mix, and stronger negotiations with partners. 

  1. Build a Single Commercial Operating System
    Align teams around shared KPIs, unified data, and one version of the performance story.

Why it matters:

Fragmented decision-making still exists, even in organizations that consider themselves integrated. Alignment will lead to faster decisions, fewer internal conflicts, and more consistent performance across the portfolio. 

  1. Scale Best Practices Across the Portfolio
    Codifyplaybooks, tools, and insights that work and push them across properties. 

Why it matters:
Leading organizations are no longer optimizing hotel by hotel, they’re scaling capability. 

  1. Build Systems That Reduce Decision Fatigue
    Simplify workflows, standardize processes, and create space for recovery and focused decision-making.

Why it matters:

Performance degrades under sustained pressure. Without strong systems, teams default to reactive behavior. The impact will be better decision quality, more sustainable execution, and stronger team performance over time. 

  1. Shorten the Distance Between Insight and Action
    Convert insights into 30-day action plans with clear ownership and defined outcomes.

Why it matters:
The industry doesn’t have an idea gap, it has an execution gap. The advantage now belongs to teams that can turn insight into action, consistently and quickly. 

Commercial Strategy Roundtable

Published June 25, 2026 

Hotel Commercial Strategy Executives: Cautious Optimism, Uneven Reality 

Last week in San Antonio, commercial leaders gathered for our first ever Hotel Commercial Strategy Executive Roundtable. It was a full room, and the result was a rich discussion. The first half of the year was broadly strong, with many attendees beating budgets, and they all saw solid RevPAR growth. The economist session at CSC landed more optimistic than expected, though the confidence still has edges. 

“Waiting for the shoe to drop” was the overarching sentiment in the room and in a survey pre-event. The strong stock market and good numbers feel fragile, while geopolitical uncertainty, including the Strait of Hormuz and global instability, make the rest of the year feel volatile.  

Segment Divergence — The K-Shaped Reality 

As one attendee pointed out, gas prices are the #1 demand driver for economy and midscale, with correlation confirmed via regression and Bayesian modeling. Recent weeks show demand softness in some pockets tied to fuel costs. 

Luxury and upper-upscale are largely insulated. Stock market equity gains are driving leisure demand, and resort ADR continues to grow, while college-town hotels are seeing record attendance. However, there was caution against broad macro-optimism. Impact varies by chain scale and consumer type, with the lower and mid-tier properties not fairing as well.  

Consumer Behavior Shifts 

Loyalty point redemptions are surging. So, while consumers are still traveling, they are substituting points for cash spend. Guests are absorbing gas costs and offsetting it by using free nights. This is seen in both drive-to destinations and at leisure destinations where length of stay is down, while redemption volume is up. 

World Cup summer travel is still a concern for upper-midscale properties as the on-the-ground demand is still not matching projected levels. 

AI, Alignment, and the Commercial Stack  

AI continues to be ubiquitous in conversations, with the discussion shifting to real use cases across revenue management efficiency, search optimization, booking engine chatbots, sales prospecting, contact center automation, and marketing deployment. 

Another universal commercial point was alignment. Many attendees’ questions focused on integrating sales, revenue, marketing, and operations, ownership expectations, and how teams are structured. Talent and training surfaced alongside AI, especially as it shifts entry-level roles and bench strength. While marketing inputs focus on cost of acquisition, tech stack constraints, attribution, GEO, and balancing OTA spend with direct investment. Sales inputs focus on workflow automation, lead response, incentive structures, and GM engagement. 

Outlook and Forecasting 

There was broad skepticism around second-half forecast strength despite strong first half of the year momentum. Forecasting and budgeting are now effectively a 24/7 exercise. Across commercial, labor costs stay a persistent pressure. 

Though summers are historically slow and there is a strong dose of skepticism in a strong H2 economic outlook, attendees were optimistic for conferences and conventions returning post-summer.  

Thank you to the companies sponsoring this roundtable Dragonfly Strategists, Lotus Marketing, and Milestone. This Roundtable was attended by people from companies such a as Atrium Hospitality, By the Sea Resorts, Castle Resorts & Hotel, Concord Hospitality, Coral Tree Hospitality Group, CoralTree Hospitality Group, Cote Hospitality, Dimension Hospitality, Drury Hotels, Extended Stay America, Graduate Hotel, IGH, Kampgrounds of America, Kasa, MCR Hotels, Omni Hotles & Resorts, OTO Development, Peachtree Group, Pyramid Global Hospitality, Red Roof, Sage Hotel Management, Sandman Hotel Group and Sutton Place Hotels, Stonebridge Companies, VAI Resort, Venetian Las Vega, Voss Hospitality, and Wyndham Hotel & Resorts.  

HSMAI hosts this unique by-invitation forum annually for executives from ownership groups who specialize in a commercial role at their company. If you are interested in being invited next year, please email HSMAI. 

What Is the State of the Global Workplace Right Now?

Sharon Andrade, Founder at HLeader, HSMAI Sales Advisory Board Member 

In a recent meeting of the HSMAI sales advisory board, we discussed talent engagement, productivity, and what happens when managers start to fray. Global employee engagement declined last year, and the economic impact reached hundreds of billions in lost productivity. The most consistent signal was manager engagement slipping first, followed closely by teams, performance, and outcomes that as commercial leaders, we feel quickly. 

We’ve all seen that managers have been carrying more weight since the pandemic, with shifting executive expectations layered on top of evolving employee needs. In the Gallup research, younger managers saw engagement fall by five percentage points, while female manager engagement declined by seven points. These numbers matter because manager engagement directly shapes team engagement, which directly shapes revenue performance, execution quality, and growth potential across sales, marketing, revenue, and distribution functions. 

One theme kept surfacing throughout the discussion: when engagement drops, people don’t necessarily quit, they just give less effort, and performance quietly declines. When managers disengage, effort narrows to tasks instead of outcomes, and productivity follows. Quiet quitting shows up long before resignations do, while active disengagement creates real risk inside organizations already stretched thin. 

Flexibility continues to drive engagement, with hybrid and remote work cited most often during our discussion. Contract and gig talent are also becoming more common as loyalty patterns shift, particularly among younger professionals. These approaches can help, but they do not solve burnout on their own. Several leaders described high-performing, fully remote teams where burnout went unnoticed until top performers unexpectedly exited. 

We talked about how recognition and feeling heard are the strongest engagement levers. Appreciation looks different across generations, roles, and personalities, and generic programs often miss the mark. Consistent recognition, peer acknowledgment, and personalized approaches resonated more than traditional incentives tied only to performance cycles. 

One line from the discussion captured the risk clearly: “How much effort are teams, leaders, and employees putting forth?” When effort drops, commercial performance follows, regardless of strategy or tools. 

Advisory Board members also emphasized the importance of psychological safety, including openly admitting mistakes and asking better questions during one-on-one conversations. Making it safe to speak up helps alleviate small issues before they become operational problems that consume time, energy, and trust. Being heard requires regular outreach, unscripted conversations, and attention beyond dashboards and surveys. 

The takeaway is that engagement is not a soft issue, and it is not owned by HR alone. It is a performance issue with direct implications for revenue, growth, and long-term competitiveness. 

Read More

• HSMAI Foundation State of Talent Report
• Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2025 

Questions for Teams 

  1. What does great talent look like today?
  2. What impacts have you seen from manager burn-out or disengagement in your organizations?
  3. How do you support managers and what specific training, tools or resources do you enable to develop and engage talent?
  4. How are you deciding what to automate vs. where to stay high-touch in the sales process and how does that affect talent needs and development?
  5. Gallup research shows that employees who feel heard are up to five times more engaged.
    a. What do you do consistently to ensure your team and or leaders feel heard?
    b. What is one best practice you have for recognition outside of standard incentive or performance based programs?
  6. What one thing can leaders do to positively impact manager engagement? 

From Disjointed to Dynamic: A Framework View of Hotel Marketing Performance

Kimberly Erwin, Principal at Lotus Marketing, HSMAI Marketing Advisory Board Member

In most hotels, marketing is a patchwork of activity rather than a system of progress. Teams stay busy, but busy doesn’t mean effective. Hotels often rely on multiple vendors executing disconnected strategies, with no clear standard for how marketing should truly work together to drive revenue. This lack of alignment creates inefficiencies and missed opportunities. As leaders in hotel marketing, Lotus Marketing set out to solve this by creating a unified, strategic framework. 

I brought this topic to a recent discussion of the HSMAI marketing advisory board, and I’ll be presenting it as a breakout on June 17th at the Commercial Strategy Conference. One comment framed the entire discussion: “Hotel marketing doesn’t have a universal standard of success, and it’s for a lot of reasons.” 

That gap makes it hard to align owners, brands, and commercial teams around what drives revenue. The framework we introduced offers a structured way to evaluate marketing as a system. The intent is clarity around what to focus on first, then next, then continuously. The framework applies across hotel types, portfolio sizes, and complexity levels. In the marketing advisory board discussion, there was an emphasis that the model is about prioritization, not tactics. Teams often default to execution because it is easier to teach and measure, while strategy sequencing is harder and often skipped. 

Step one is the foundation, defining who the hotel is and who it represents. This is where positioning lives, and, without it, everything becomes diluted. Trying to be everything weakens relevance, especially in an environment shaped by search engines and AI agents. 

Next comes alignment. This connects the brand foundation to what commercial objectives are, and gets marketing, sales, revenue, and leadership working toward the same outcomes. When budgets and effort align with the revenue streams they are meant to support, paid activity stops masking deeper misalignment. 

Expression is how the brand shows up across channels and touchpoints. Consistency matters because guests evaluate hotels everywhere. Websites, social channels, thirdparty platforms, and sales materials must ladder to the same goals, because fragmentation breaks trust and performance. 

Immersion moves marketing from promise to experiences, like programming, activations, and onproperty moments that reinforce why guests remember the stay. This requires operational alignment, all teams need to understand the experience being sold and deliver it consistently. As we discussed in the meeting, this can be a point of tension when marketing promotes experiences that are not delivered consistently on property.  

Finally, outreach comes last. Partnerships, community presence, media, advocacy and where the brand extends beyond the hotel. Without the earlier pillars in place, third parties cannot tell the story well. The sequence matters because compounding only happens when the base is solid. 

The assessment tool turns the framework into clear, objective criteria. It benchmarks performance, surfaces gaps, and pinpoints where investment will have the most impact. The call confirmed that a shared marketing language would allow aligning commercial teams, building owner confidence, and positioning marketing as a strategic asset. 

Recommended Reading and Viewing 

Recommended Team Questions 

  • How closely does this methodology reflect current marketing practice?
  • Which parts feel unclear to nonmarketing stakeholders?
  • Where could this help benchmark portfolio performance?
  • Where would implementation most likely break down? 

Ancillary Revenue Growth and the Shift to Total Revenue Thinking

Sofya Williams (formerly Sofya McIntosh), SVP Sales & Customer Success, ComOps, Sales Advisory Board Member 

Chris Hardy, Vice President of Commercial Strategy, Parks Hospitality Group, Sales Advisory Board Chair  

A recent discussion of HSMAI’s Sales Advisory Board centered on a truth everyone felt but hadn’t said plainly: moving from rooms-only goals to a total revenue strategy is no longer optional for Sales. Guests make decisions based on the whole experience. Profit comes from far more than the room. And revenue leakage happens early, long before a contract or check-in. 

As one participant mentioned, everyone has a stake in total guest value. 

Who Owns Total Revenue? 

Ownership varies by hotel type and data capability, but the commercial leader often ends up as the controller. They are the ones who ensure every piece of business is evaluated on its full contribution and who coach sellers to think like owners. The problem is data. Most hotels can’t track spend at the guest level, and when the technology does exist, cost and brand restrictions limit adoption. 

Incentives That Actually Match Reality 

The group discussed incentives and highlighted a mismatch. Some companies reward leaders for total contribution, while others skip Sales entirely and tie ancillary metrics only to operational roles. The consensus: incentives shape behavior, and room-only compensation structures push sellers toward room-only decisions. 

Where Ancillary Revenue Lives in the Journey 

The board agreed ancillaries are inconsistently integrated. In full-service hotels, they may appear during contracting. In select-service, they land mostly in operations, handled by staff with little sales training. The opportunities span the whole journey: pre-arrival touches, reservation quotes, internal pre-con alignment, understanding group demographics, and building simple offers like paid early checkout or grab-and-go bundles. 

The biggest unlock is confidence and training. Without that, even guests who want to spend more won’t be asked. 

A More Intentional Revenue Architecture 

Shifting to a total-revenue mindset requires:

  • Clear KPIs that reflect total contribution
  • Shared ownership across commercial functions
  • Incentives that reinforce total value
  • Training for operational teams
  • Simple, consistent ancillary offers
  • Better visibility into guest behavior 

The architecture already exists in frameworks and playbooks. The challenge is making it part of everyday sales behavior, not an afterthought once business is already booked. 

For more on total revenue, check out the session The Next Frontier of Hotel Revenue: Activating TRevPAR on June 17th at the HSMAI Commercial Strategy Conference.  

Recommended Reading 

Team Discussion Questions 

  1. Who owns total revenue per guest today, and who should? 
  2. Are we optimizing ADR at the expense of total spend? 
  3. Where in the buying journey are we losing the most revenue? 
  4. Are ancillaries intentionally part of the sales process or only surfaced after contracting? 
  5. Do our incentives support total contribution or only rooms? 

The Human Advantage: Hospitality Leadership in an Automated World

Jennifer Hill, Senior Vice President, Commercial Strategy, Kalibri, HSMAI Revenue Optimization Advisory Board Member

Automation is everywhere, and hospitality is feeling it. This piece comes from a recent discussion by the revenue advisory board.   

The participants agreed that the question isn’t whether technology will expand, but what happens to hospitality when it does. One line from the conversation hit the center of the issue: “We won’t know until we’ve gone too far.” 

A recent Harvard Business Review article framed it clearly: efficiency scales, but human connection differentiates. As one discussion participant pointed out, the moments when human interaction matters most are also the moments when revenue and loyalty are most at stake: service recovery. high value guests, long lead bookings. These are the places where automation creates risk, not relief. 

Across the group, a pattern surfaced. Routine questions? Automate them. Anything that removes friction for the guest? Automate that too. But experiential touchpoints — the ones that shape loyalty, pricing power, and return behavior — stay human. A callback after checkout at a leisure resort landed because it felt intentional. Nobody expected it at an economy hotel, and expectations matter. 

Chain scale framed much of the debate. Some expect the “human touch” to become a luxury, with automation freeing staff to focus on higher value interactions. Others questioned whether loyalty even holds the same weight in a world defined by efficiency and rising labor costs. The examples of “autonomous hotels” underscored the gap between promise and practice. Fully automated rarely means fully autonomous. 

Still, one of the sharper questions came late in the discussion: if technology handles most transactions, and efficiency becomes table stakes, what will actually create pricing power? Will it be efficiency, personalization, brand strength, or human hospitality? Initial answers split, but the group agreed that traveler intent adds another layer. A business traveler arriving at midnight wants speed. A leisure guest wants connection. The same brand can deliver both if it knows who it’s talking to. 

The last thread focused on segmentation. Traditional models aren’t holding up against today’s patterns, and without accurate signals, personalization is limited. Several pointed to the value of first-party data and engagement — prearrival behavior, direct booking behavior, and what guests opt into or ignore. Others noted that even the best segmentation doesn’t matter if the technology doesn’t work. Friction kills trust fast. 

The conversation ended with more questions than answers, which seems right for where the industry is. Automation is accelerating. Human hospitality still matters. The tension between them is where commercial strategy now lives. 

Recommended Reading 

Questions for Teams 

  • As hotels adopt more automation across booking, messaging, and operations, where should hospitality organizations intentionally preserve human interaction because it drives higher revenue, stronger loyalty, or greater lifetime value?
  • How much influence should commercial leaders have in shaping the guest experience if that experienceultimately drivespricing power, repeat business, and long-term revenue growth? 
  • Where have you seen human hospitality directly influence revenue performance, whether through higher ADR, repeat stays, ancillary spending, or stronger guest loyalty?
  • When evaluatingnew technologyinvestments, how should organizations balance cost efficiency with the potential revenue upside of better guest experiences and stronger loyalty? 
  • If AI eventually handles most transactions and operational efficiency becomes table stakes, what will create pricing power for hotel brands in the future? Is it efficiency, data-driven personalization, brand strength, or authentic human hospitality?