hotel sales
Going to Texas for The Hospitality Show? What You Need to Know Make the Most of Your Time
Mike Pavicich | October 22, 2024
By Mike Pavicich | Director, Global Sales | SalesAndCatering.com As we get ready for The Hospitality Show 2024, there's a lot of excitement about the sessions, keynotes, and social events that will be happening. It's going to be quite a great event. But you know what, for me as a people-person, the real magic often happens outside the sessions. Ever notice how the best insights come from chatting with interesting people? These folks might share stories that make you laugh, confirm your ideas, or even surprise you with new perspectives. Sessions usually get all the attention, but they can be a bit of a one-way conversation. You can alw...
Q3 2024 Major U.S. Hotel Sales Survey
Daniel Lesser | October 21, 2024
By Daniel H. Lesser 2024 has been a turbulent year thus far as we have witnessed dramatic national and global events that may very well alter the course of history. During this past quarter alone: • Two assassination attempts were made on a former U.S. President who is a major party candidate once again in the upcoming election. • One month prior to this year’s Democratic National Convention, U.S. President Joe Biden, having earned sufficient delegates to be the party nominee, withdrew his candidacy and was replaced by the current Vice President Kamala Harris. • Nearly one year after the horrific events of October 7, 2023,...
Hotel Sales Training Lessons Learned From a Top-Tier Real-World Practitioner
Doug Kennedy | October 9, 2024
Real-world insights into today’s hotel sales environment While being a sales trainer for a diversity of lodging providers certainly keeps me in touch with what’s going on in the profession of hotel sales these days, I always capitalize on every opportunity to gain insights from real-world practitioners. One such opportunity recently presented itself when I caught up with Jennifer Daudi, Chief Executive Officer of Invigorate Hospitality, which offers remote sales support to a long and diverse list of hotels across virtually all major brands. Besides overseeing her team of expert salespeople, Jennifer herself has decades of experie...
Hoteliers: For Those About to Rage…
Haydn Kramer | August 22, 2024
From Dylan Thomas, I quote: “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” You my hotel friends are “the light”. My beloved hotel industry is always on the cutting edge, sooner or later. And lately there has been an onslaught of print, post, pod about just how we should be doing things. From industry insiders, seasoned hotel executives on CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and a million other industry publications, and of course LinkedIn, the world’s leading professional network, a la Microsoft. In the face of this, I’m going to help you vent. I’m not going to g...
Hotel Sales Is High-Touch: Are You Under-Resourced to Compete?
Rick Blackburn | August 15, 2024
As we begin to ask questions specific to the hotel sales team – their strategy, tactics, sales initiatives, business development, client engagement, etc – it becomes quite apparent how “high-touch” the sales discipline is in today’s environment which often includes reduced staffing, loss of legacy talent, and the increased absence of training and corporate resources. The majority of my hospitality clients are franchise hotels, independents, smaller hotel brands, and destination marketing organizations (DMOs, or convention & visitors bureaus). Interestingly enough, the challenges and “pain points” are consistent in all o...
Hotel Sales Habitudes for Booking More Groups, Conferences, and Events – Complimentary Registration Now Open for Doug Kennedy’s Next Webca
Doug Kennedy | August 6, 2024
Sponsored By Travel Outlook and Track Hospitality Software Register your team and participate live, or view the recording, of Doug Kennedy’s next 40-minute training webcast scheduled for Friday, August 16, from Noon – 12:45pm EST. REGISTER HERE “Today’s hotel and event salespeople work in completely different environments than most of their leaders experienced,” said KTN President Doug Kennedy. “Meeting planning and event booking sites have created a flood of leads, which can be overwhelming for salespeople.” When revenues drop, salespeople are required to meet prospecting quotas, based on a set number of calls, sent ema...
Q2 2024 Major U.S. Hotel Sales Survey
Daniel Lesser | July 22, 2024
By Daniel H. Lesser Despite the Federal Reserve’s aggressive monetary policy aimed at controlling persistent inflation, during the first half of 2024, the U.S. economy continued to demonstrate resilience. While strong growth in many subcategories of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) including consumer and government spending, investment, exports, and employment have many optimistic, the economic outlook is tempered by global geopolitical risks including on-going wars in Europe and the Middle East. Although the U.S. economic outlook remains positive, signs of a softening consumer are mounting within lower-to-middle-income households. While re...
Avoid Sales “CRM Overwhelm”: Focus on the Three Most Important Things Your Sales Tracking Tech Should Do
Doug Kennedy | June 26, 2024
As I make the rounds conducting hotel sales training, I am afforded the opportunity to peek into how hotel group and event salespeople are using a wide variety of what I collectively call “Sales CRMs.” This is because as part of our pre-training assessment, I get to preview the clients’ sales tech, and when time allows, we have participants do workshop activities in their sales CRMs. As a result, I have seen more if not all of the sales CRM systems offered (or endorsed) by top-tier brands, including legacy systems that have been “rolled up” by tech conglomerates. Additionally, having started in the hotel training field in my lat...
