HSMAI Brings CROs Together to Discuss State of the Industry
HSMAI’s mission is to grow business for hotels and their partners by fueling sales, inspiring marketing and optimizing revenue. One of the ways the association fulfills this mission throughout the year is by bringing together industry leaders at roundtables where these industry leaders can share insights with members and the industry.
 
The latest example of this work is the Fourth Annual Chief Revenue Officer Executive Roundtable that HSMAI held at the Westin Bonaventure this past June in Los Angeles with the objective to provide a safe environment for CROs to exchange ideas. The agenda was based on a survey of CROs with three themes: 1) the evolving role of distribution; 2) evolving business analytics; and 3) TED-style talks on a variety of subjects of interest to CROs.
 
New this year were interviews by phone with three CEOs of major hotel companies. This is the only HSMAI roundtable that featured a mashup of a management company, brands and ownership group representatives.

A major portion of the time was spent discussing distribution, and a number of brand and management companies have joined together to deal with this issue that is front and center for revenue managers.
 
There are now booking brands and stay brands. Consumers go to 10 or 15 sites before they book. Stay brands pay to have a presence on these sites and then have to pay again for the hotel experience.
 
Three-quarters of the booking brands' business comes through hotels. Their revenue is the hotel industry’s expense.

The growth of the booking brands has been overwhelming, and, in many cases, has caused profits to be flat despite the recovery. The cost of revenue is growing faster than the revenue itself, as one CEO said.

Education is crucial so that hotels know how much they are spending throughout the entire acquisition process.
The discussion also focused on developing talent and ensuring there is continual training for employees working in this area. Not only to help them look at all the potential sources of revenue in a hotel, but also to help them bring the kind of analytics and forecasts that can assist the entire team.

In addition, one of the CEOs talked about the importance of social media and its role in revenue. The industry has been behind in leveraging social media, and the future will be who in the revenue management world can harness social media for good. This will happen more naturally with the next group of recruits, who grew up with social media and know it as a “first” language.