ORLANDO, Florida — The COVID-19 pandemic brought changes to how the hotel industry operates and functions, increasing operators' and travelers' reliance on remote working and technology.
Some of those changes have been beneficial and are here to stay moving forward, according to hotel revenue managers who participated in a roundtable discussion at HSMAI's 2022 Revenue Optimization Conference Americas.
Remote Working
The pandemic-era surge of remote working has adjusted how some workers view traveling, taking more leisure trips and simply working from their hotel room.
Lori Kiel, chief revenue and marketing officer at Kessler Collection, said the shift in work-life balance “changed the game.”
“People don’t travel to work; they travel and then work,” she said.
The recovery of business transient demand might never get back to full strength because of this shift to bleisure travel, Kiel said, but regardless of business transient travel recovery levels, bleisure travel is here to stay.
Erica Lipscomb, senior vice president of commercial strategy at Crescent Hotels & Resorts, pointed out that newfound flexibility plus lingering regrets over not spending enough time with loved ones prior to the pandemic are leading to an increased travel demand, especially since some travelers won’t have to worry about taking time off.
“People want to be with their friends. Those individuals who just worked and worked and worked, realized the value of life,” she said.
Remote working hasn’t just affected travelers, though. Panelists said their revenue-management teams also have shifted to more at-home work.
Karen McWilliams, vice president of revenue strategy at Concord Hospitality Enterprises, shared an anecdote of an employee who worked from Europe for a short period of time while preparing to move. Allowing this flexibility creates a better work environment, she said.
“Making sure that we maintain culture and empathy with our teams — there are different needs right now,” she said. “Going through this experience, the opportunity is now to be able to allow people to have amazing work-life balance, and that has taken on a whole new definition.”
Technology
Having confidence in the results generated by technology behind revenue-management systems can be a challenge at times, but there’s a reason the tech is in place, said Vickie Callahan, senior vice president of revenue generation at Peachtree Hospitality Management.
For example, booking windows have increased from between 30 and 45 days to 90 days, and Callahan's team has adjusted its strategy accordingly.
“We do have to give a little bit more faith and trust in the systems because they are reading the current trends a little faster than we can,” she said.
It’s getting easier, though, with tech companies growing more attentive and responsive to the needs of revenue managers, Callahan said.
“Before it was, ‘We’ll give you this platform and here’s your technology,’ but now they’re getting into our world and understanding what we do,” she said. “Now they’re creating things and challenging us to ask the questions that we need to ask to get better technology.”
Some revenue managers would like to see the emphasis switch back to more human interaction in positions such as sales. Kiel said a main reason why there’s been high turnover rates in sales departments across the hospitality industry since the pandemic started is over reliance on what the technology says instead of giving employees free rein to close a deal.
“The reality of what sales used to be, and what it inherently is, is my ability to sell you on this … and negotiate with you and create a relationship and a trust and land a deal,” Kiel said. “Our sales process is so broken by our tech.”