NASHVILLE, Tennessee — HEI Hotels & Resorts Senior Vice President of Revenue Management Jeremy See believes the biggest issue hoteliers face right now is inflation. But the cure for that problem might just be confident revenue managers.
Speaking with Hotel News Now at the 2022 Hotel Data Conference, See said revenue leaders must be telling their teams to be aggressive.
"I think my role as a leader is I've got to instill that confidence in our team to say, 'Look, here's what inflation is; you've got to push it by 8%, 9% to start,'" See said. "I think one thing we learned in COVID is that if you don't try, you don't know. A lot of the resorts got good rates, but that's because someone asked for it."
This lodging rebound is an anomaly historically because it has been driven by strong rate growth rather than outsize demand growth, which means revenue managers have been succeeding by taking risks, See said.
"The good thing about hotels is if it doesn't work, you lost a week, you can fix it next week and do something else," he said. "It's a lot of testing by just knowing what to do and trying it out."
See said there has been some early signs to be optimistic going into 2023, with hope remaining for a business travel comeback and group demand increasing, even if it's not all the way back to normal.
"While markets are getting busier, and we're making the [revenue per available room] we did, we're still not selling out," he said. "Group is still a key piece of what we need to go, and so the focus is still on really just booking group at this point and getting the right base business."
For more from HNN's interview with HEI's Jeremy See, watch the video above.