TORONTO — For years, hoteliers have talked about the need to "breakdown the silos" between the disciplines of revenue management, sales and marketing, but experts say those silos remain, at least somewhat, and leaders must reconsider how they approach career development to address that problem.
During the "Great Debate: Setting the Foundation for True Revenue Strategy" session at HSMAI's 2023 Revenue Optimization Conference, Jeff Borman, vice president of revenue optimization at Ashford Inc., said not enough focus is given to providing employees a diverse set of experiences.
"The bigger problem is that people will look at their plan and really think 'I need to go up and up and up,'" he said. "And leadership reinforces that. Unfortunately, bosses and employees tend not to focus on skill-building."
Borman said moving employees into different roles that will elevate their skill sets rather than positions that would seem to be the next rung on the ladder of traditional growth is helpful in crossing the divide.
He said one of the most meaningful points in his career was going from overseeing revenue management for a portfolio of Ritz-Carlton hotels to a portfolio of select-service hotels.
"My Ritz-Carlton friends thought I was being demoted, and it was really a change to go learn how to do it in a different way," he said. "It's about being a better leader in the next step because you know how to solve the same problem in a few different ways."
Janelle Cornett, market director of revenue management at Sonesta Hospitality, said like many in the discipline, she came up almost exclusively within revenue. She said often people in different disciplines have different viewpoints, with salespeople viewing the world in shades of gray while revenue experts see the world in black and white.
Cornett said that point of view is quickly changing across the industry.
"Revenue management has evolved," she said. "We do care more about loyalty and guest performance. We've been trained to care about what everybody is saying about our hotel. As leaders in meetings and as leaders of this information, we need to making sure we're crossing those lines."
Cornett said part of the solution is revenue managers getting better at articulating takeaways from data rather and focusing on analysis that can help the entire commercial operation. But to do that, the industry largely needs to find "better tools to present data."
"We know the story that we want to tell, but that data is hard for us to have and for others to understand, so I feel like we have a data problem," she said.
Borman said one of the biggest steps in moving away from the siloed approach is to talk between departments more about strategy and less about data points.
"Commercial teams still have people who stay exactly in their swim lanes," he said. "It's easy to just read out a report, but there's no value in calling out what we can all look at ourselves. What we really need is a focus on what strategic adjustments are being made as a result of having come to meetings prepared."
Borman said cross-departmental meetings generally tend to be more productive when they have a clear goal in which participants are encouraged to take a "two ears, one mouth" approach and when they "throw the org chart out the window."
"Everybody has a function or a value-add based on what they do well or what they're supposed to be doing well," Borman said.