Table of Contents Introduction .....................................................2 Shots of Sales Caffeine .....................................4 Shots of Revenue Management Caffeine..........26 Shots of Motivation.........................................43 

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The Best of Shots of Hotel Sales & RM Caffeine

Introduction 

It has been almost two years that I have been writing and posting Weekly Shots of Hotel Sales & Revenue Management (“RM”) Caffeine. Every Sunday evening I sit down to write the micro blog and think about what my subscribers might want to hear that will make their jobs easier and more efficient. What latest research and trends can I provide for them and translate down to the ground where they work every day! When this journey began there were approximately 25 subscribers. Today there are over 500. When I tag an article letting people know they can sign up for this free micro blog my inbox goes into over-drive. I can remember one Sunday evening when one of my articles appeared in a hospitality publication that serves the Asia-Pacific region. On that same evening my laptop was on the chair next to me while I was watching TV and as a result of that article, the bell on my inbox began going berserk and I received close to 75 new subscribers. During the recession, we had a lot of ‘bounces’, people that were no longer at the hotel for which we had their email addresses. However, we also picked up a lot of new subscribers – I don’t think a week ever goes by that we don’t pick up a few.

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I have tried to keep the Shots timely and pertinent to the current situation. However, when I look back at the entries made during times of recession, I notice that most are useful in any situation. Many of the lessons learned in the recent downturn are the same lessons that many of us learned in the recession after 9/11. It is disappointing that many of these same lessons had to be relearned. Those that forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them – especially the one about rate not driving demand when there is little demand! I notice that over the past two years, the ‘Shots’ have gotten longer. I will try to keep that under control for the future. This is after all a micro blog that you should be able to glance at and read in a matter of seconds. This eBook is organized not by date but by topic. The thought behind this is that when you are looking for a little shot of sales or RM ‘juice,’ you can go to that topic’s section. The beauty of eBooks is that they are on your reader or computer and can be accessed at any time. I hope that this little eBook gives each of you some useful Shots of Caffeine when you need them.

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Shots of Sales Caffeine 

There are days when every sales person is looking for a byte of inspiration; a sales tip; or thoughts on market trends that can inform a sales strategy. On those days when your feel invisible, no one answers their phone or returns your calls and your emails go unread, we all need something that will help keep us going. The hope is that this is a section you can turn to and find one thing that will inspire you to pick up the phone one more time. The sales process has evolved since Shots began. We have more to think about. We have new ways of doing things and new influences on our customers’ buying behavior and site selections. Social media was not as powerful a tool as it is now. Review sites are wielding more influence than ever and more platforms got into the group sales arena. All of these things have forced sales people to reorder and reprioritize their activities. The sales process has evolved from a linear process – prospect, qualify, negotiate and close – to a more spiral process. Customers want to buy but they don’t want to be sold. They prequalify us then make a decision as to whether they want to consider doing business with us – return the call, respond to an email, engage with us on social networks.

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You will find in the section of Shots of Hotel Sales Caffeine that follows how this process has evolved and how we can sell better in this new environment.

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February 2009 Sales with Attitude – You can do it! Get rid of the news feed on your computer and the toxic people in your life and workplace. Come in early and stay late – make more sales contacts – every ‘no’ pushes you closer to ‘yes’. Companies are trading down for travel and meetings. Look to the clients of hotels in your market at the next level up. Target their accounts. You probably won’t have to lower your rate as they are trading down to the value they find in the next level. March 2009 Have you contacted every event and festival venue within a 20 mile radius of your hotel? Log onto the venue web site for their upcoming events. It should have links to the organizations that are hosting these events with contact info. Get listed, put a link to your hotel reservations site for incoming visitors on their site, see if you can locate a list of the vendors or exhibitors and contact info. Make the event coordinator at each venue your BFF! Get ahead of the Economic Stimulus Package projects for your state. Go to the state web site and look for the organizations and companies that will benefit. Go to the DOT site for your state and look

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for the ‘shovel ready’ projects that are identified. Monitor www.bidclerk.com for the info on which companies have received construction contracts for projects in your area. Mine for leads online. Have you tried Priceline for groups? Priceline forwards the lead to the hotel and you have the option to accept or deny – what do you have to lose if it fits the RM strategy! April 2009 Stop right now – go down to the lobby and pick up the Monday USA Today. In the Money Section there are a graph and a list of those stock market sectors performing better than others in this economy. That is where you can find prospects still traveling and having meetings. Plan your prospecting activity by using these filters. Google one of these sectors that are in your territory. Research and call three of them today! Local Specials Packages! Your local market is hungry for a break but can’t afford or doesn’t want to take the risk of a drive or fly vacation. Develop a special weekend package for your local market – include breakfast, emphasize the pool for the kids, throw in a spa treatment, a free movie and a pizza for the kids while Mom and Dad have a great dinner downstairs – any or all of the above. Promote it in your local paper, both print and online editions, get

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out a press release and try for some local coverage on TV or radio. Your local market may not travel to the next state but a weekend getaway across town just may be affordable! May 2009 Google Alerts – FREE and easy! Set Google Alerts for your hotel to see what is being said about it on review sites and blogs. Set Google alerts for your competitors to see what’s being said about them on the internet! Best of all – set Google Alerts for your top accounts and prospects to receive new info about them when it hits the web such as press releases on new products, financial situation and internal promotions! This will alert you to any developments that could trigger meetings or additional travel. Search for Google Alerts and follow the easy steps. Be specific about the exact name to minimize the ‘garbage’ that could be sent into your Inbox. Social networking can consume a great deal of time but is critical to stay in touch with clients and business contacts. Set a time limit and allocate time that is non-prime sales call hours. It is commonly acknowledged how important this is but how is it accounted for on sales reports? In the new metrics of sales activity, client ‘contacts’ in the form of emails and social networking, should also be counted as valid sales activity on weekly reports.

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June 2009 Stealing share! According to Smith Travel, mid-level hotels without F&B seem to be winning the battle in corporate travel. These hotels are stealing share from the next level up due to their value proposition -- free breakfast, free internet, etc. Want your share back? Meet their value proposition at a comparable rate for corporate travelers and RFPs. Those hotels that are driving market share will be positioned to drive rate when the recovery begins – that could be sooner than you think! According to an HSMAI survey, 61% of meeting planners are on Face Book, 58% on LinkedIn but only 13% are on Twitter. If your market is meetings, this should tell you where to invest your social media time and efforts. Does your hotel have a company profile on LinkedIn? Have you uploaded videos of your hotel or special events? How about photos from a successful meeting with the permission of the planner? Be where your customers and potential customers are! The sum of small initiatives that generate small results can add up to big group rooms production. Case study: An independent resort and conference center did a series of small eblasts to clients in their database. One was a special offer to government planners; another was to the corporate database making a special offer for a limited time.

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Each blast returned one to two small meetings and a few RFP requests. Did either unleash a flood of demand – no, but by segmenting their efforts into the niches of their database, they were able to score small victories. Celebrate small victories! July 2009 RFPs for 2010 – negotiations are going to be brutal this year. As well, we are seeing ‘rogue’ RFPs that are booking through the OTAs and the opaque channels. Fight to retain your RFPs with value adds – remember to ‘dollarize’ or state explicitly the monetized value of value adds if their travelers had to pay for them. Don’t lock in rates for more than a year – with an impending recovery, you could be leaving money on the table if you lock in for longer. ‘Rogue’ RFPs also need to be reminded and/or enticed to book within their agreement by going through the same exercise. Try to maintain rate integrity all channels on peak mid-week corporate travel nights. The meetings market is not ‘dead’ – government and many market sectors are still planning meetings. Build on relationships with existing accounts and actively ask them for referrals to others in their organizations. Make sure that you have ‘mapped’ existing accounts – pull all the business out of those that use the hotel and are pleased with the execution of their event. The

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‘reliability factor’ is a huge concern for meeting planners – once you have demonstrated that most planners would be happy to refer you to others in their organization! August 2009 Does your Sales & Marketing Plan include a section on Social Network strategies? Have you established guidelines for professional engagement with your sales managers – who are they going to invite into their network, which discussion groups are they going to join and the ‘etiquette’ of being professional on these sites -- and how about that hotel profile page on LinkedIn, Facebook and i-meet? Is it designed to drive business to your web site? Oh yeah, how well does your sales team use these sites to qualify companies and contacts? Power Prospecting – more, better, faster! If you are still looking for new business development prospects like you did in 2007 or even the beginning of 2008 think again. We need to put two to three times the prospects in the pipeline than we did before and the only way we can do that is to be better and faster at lead development. Hotel sales processes are moving away from a linear process – from ‘pushing’ to ‘pulling’. We are moving from sales 2.0 to sales 2.5 or 3.0. Prospecting has moved far beyond just search to social networks – it’s not just about User Generated Content it’s about engaging and

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collaborating with potential contacts. Put yourself in their place – how do your prospects want to buy? RFP negotiations – is the dynamic pricing model in this year’s negotiations a benefit or headache for hotels? The dynamic pricing model appears to be weighted toward the buyer and could be a management nightmare for revenue managers, especially those at smaller and independent hotels. The fact is that this year no hotel can afford to lose the business so negotiating a deal in which the dynamic pricing model still requires travelers to book the preferred hotel is going to be the best deal. ‘Dollarizing’ the value adds to emphasize what they would lose if they booked other hotels outside the agreement can be key to keeping the business! Is your hotel’s 2010 Sales and Marketing Plan aligned with the forecasts for recovery by market segments? According to PKF and STR, leisure will recover first although with continued focus on ‘value’. Corporate travel will begin to show some signs of life but with the RFP process showing continued downward pressure on rates. Corporate groups will be the last segment to recover as there are still significant internal pressures on many companies to realize budget gains by reducing the number of meetings. Have you allocated both monetary and human resources to reflect these trends for 2010?

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September 2009 The Tuesday following Labor Day should be called New Year’s Day! It is the day when everyone is back from vacation both mentally and physically. The recession is forecast to end for the economy as whole in the upcoming third quarter. Both individual leisure and unmanaged (such as RFPs) corporate travel in small and midsize companies is returning – meetings will lag behind but there are meetings out there. The marketing/sales plan and the revenue management plan should be pretty much done for next year, assuming that they are both part of the same document. There are assumptions built into the plan that are often unarticulated in terms of how the market and market segments will behave. But what if they don’t behave the way we think they will? When things don’t turn out the way we think they will, often panic ensues and decisions are based on (you guessed it) another discount program for another market segment. Build in ‘what if’ strategies and contingency plans into the plan now – so that they are ready to roll out of the box if things don’t work out as we ‘planned’ and maybe they won’t need to include steep discounts.

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October 2009 The Small Stones! We know that hotels sales people are doing everything they can to locate and book business but have you turned over the all small stones – the ones that are less obvious. Small stones that may have been otherwise ignored because they were too small, took too much time or simply weren’t’ thought of. Imagine if every market segment could turn over one small stone for small incremental increases in revenue. Small increases in revenue add up to a significant difference! At this week’s sales meeting, brainstorm on one small stone – for example: can you locate one small account on the internal reports that you could get more revenue from. November 2009 I returned last week from the Wisconsin Innkeepers Association’s annual meeting where I did a presentation on Revenue Management. Many of the participants were from independent hotels and resorts, some large and some small. We focused on ‘smart’ discounting versus the implications of just dropping the rate with an eye on the cost of reservations. We also discussed the opportunities afforded by social networks – basically free – that can get independents exposure in ways that would be very expensive otherwise. Are you maximizing opportunities by having a well-designed

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hotel page on Facebook, LinkedIn and group social networks like i-Meet? Given the money spent on SEO for the hotel web site, doesn’t it make sense to increase exposure at no additional cost – exposure that can be picked up by the search engines and can enhance you position on the page? Back to basics – the reservation call! There are some processes that make perfect sense from an operational standpoint but not from the customer standpoint. One of these is automatically ‘flipping’ a reservation call to the franchise central reservation office. The volume of reservations to the property is greatly reduced by many segments booking online -- the potential customers that call the property are doing so because they want to talk to a live human who can give them info that online booking engines and central res can’t. The end result is that many hotel front desk people are poorly trained to ‘sell’ a reservation call. A small investment in this area can yield big results in repeat guests – another example of ‘small stones’ initiatives! The turkey leftovers are almost gone and we are moving into December – a time to prepare for the next holiday! Not so fast! December is an excellent time to book business for next year. Budgets have been finalized and decision makers are looking to book before the end of the year. Get back in touch with those pending contracts, verbal and online expressions of interest and those ‘soft’ leads that you maybe didn’t follow up. Every lead not

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followed up is potentially lost business. You have three weeks left to blow the top off of your goals for the year – don’t sandbag, DO IT NOW! December 2009 It’s football Sunday – do you go deep or go long? Unless you have a prospecting strategy to go deep don’t bother to go long. Most hotels have a huge reservoir of past guests and their data from many segments that have used the hotel in various capacities that may not be aware of your other services. This was driven home to me this week at an independent conference center. This is a huge reservoir of good experiences built up with customers that have attended a wedding, family reunion or other functions and attractions. Use the email addresses used for reservation confirmations, etc. to let them know about your meeting and conference services and use your meeting contacts to let them know about weddings, family reunions, etc. If you are not cross marketing to these segments you are missing the opportunity to let your clients ‘show you the love’ by giving them a good reason to return to the hotel for other functions!

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February 2010 Poll result from i-Meet webinar on Friday – 72% of the meeting planners online for this program indicated that social media and the hotel’s listing, page, etc. was Important in venue selection. That’s huge! Social media pages level the playing field for smaller and independent hotels – in some ways they put independents at a an advantage. Independents have more latitude in using the tools on these listings – franchise properties often must abide by the company standards. Right now – go to your social media listings and pages. Put yourself in the place of the planner – would you, the planner, find enough info there to ‘buy’ your hotel? April 2010 In last week’s i-Meet webinar, we interviewed Jennifer Winn, a meeting planner who uses social media to promote her business but also to select meeting venues. Remember that in the first i-Meet webinar 72% of meeting planners indicted that social media were important in venue selection. When Jennifer was asked what she looks for in hotel profiles, she indicated that she looks for the pertinent hotel info. Often, she can’t find a complete profile page with the pictures and info that gives her what she needs to make a decision to contact a property for an event. The lesson here – if you are going to take the time to post a hotel profile make sure that

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you put yourself in the place of the planner and include the info they need to decide to go to the next level. PS. Have you checked your hotel profile and the hotel web site to make sure that both include the most basic info like the total number of rooms? June 2010 Demand is definitely picking up in the group market. Mark Woodworth, president of PKF Hospitality Research. “Anecdotally, just talking to people around the country … they’re all pretty much saying the same thing: The inquiries are up. Advanced bookings are up. They do not have to discount as much.” Great news – but the thing that disturbs me is the term ‘inquiries’. Inquiries from customers that have been developed and relationships established by the sales department are the fruit of a good sales effort. Inquiries that come in randomly may or may not be a good thing. Over the last eighteen months, many sales departments having developed the psychological reaction of taking most business that comes along in the form of inquiries because there have been so few inquiries. With demand increasing it is increasingly important to continue prospecting in all market segments so sales can develop and choose those pieces of business that are the most profitable. Beware of operating from a mentality of gratitude for an incoming inquiry!

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The most recent survey about social media as a lead generator from eMarketer.com (June 15, 2010) indicated that “Most referrals from social sites (to the web site) (were) uninterested in products and services”. The study goes on to say that “Visitors from the top social sites were generally uninterested in product or contact pages, suggesting they were not in the market for the company’s products or services.” I have developed leads from social networks but receive unsolicited leads – not so much. I think we all tend to wonder what we are doing wrong if we don’t get leads from social sites, hence the expanding cottage industry in how to generate leads from social sites. The two lessons to be learned from this are (1) breathe deeply, it’s not anything you aren’t doing and (2) leads are something to be developed using social sites as well as other sources – you still have to dig for them. I’ll have more info on what this means, charts and graphs, on a new hotel sales blog post this week. Watch for it out on Twitter and LinkedIn! July 2010 Social media advertising – Savvy small business marketers are increasingly realizing that the opportunity to reach customers extends beyond traditional paid search into the booming social media space. Having surpassed Google as the most visited website for the week ending March 13, 2010 and with over 400 million registered users, Facebook offers a significant audience that shouldn't be ignored. Social

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networks like Facebook can provide online marketers hyper-targeted advertising opportunities that can tap into new customer segments and serve as a complement to other paid search programs. (American Express Open – Small Business, 6/28/10). Marketing Plan and budgeting season is coming up, have you budgeted for Facebook pay per click advertising and more importantly – do you have a Facebook Fan page that you want to drive potential guests to? August 2010 Tribes! Seth Godin wrote an entire book about the power of tribes. In every sales person’s database there are tribes. These are the groups that are clients and potential clients that know us. We may have multiple tribes with different interests, in different market segments, etc. We have the power to ‘lead’ and connect with our tribes. However, if we only push out promotions or every call is a ‘sales’ call, they quickly lose interest. Engage your tribes with articles and information that might of interest to them, share a story about yourself or an amusing quote that might make them smile. Go ‘touch’ your tribe today and give them something of value – they will appreciate it and remember you for it! Social Media strategy – do you know how to develop one and measure it? What do you want to accomplish with a Fan page or professional profile?

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Who are the Fans you want to target and engage? What do want to post and when? What conversations do want to engage Fans in? Who is going to be allowed to post and what are their guidelines? Oh, and don’t forget to disable the review tab. A strong referral is the most powerful lead a sales person can get. Every time I get to this point in a sales seminar I get the heads nodding in agreement but also get the response that sales people know they should be asking for referrals from satisfied customers but don’t really do it very often. I plead guilty to this myself! There is a new product on the market, uRefer, which is an online platform that automates the process and allows the sales person to reward the referee (I think that’s the term!) with a gift card, a Thank You note or a donation to their favorite charity. Group business is on the rebound as everyone knows by now. “In a June survey of members by Meeting Professionals International, which represents meeting planners, 61% responded that they're seeing more favorable business conditions, including attendance, budgets and number of meetings. In August last year, only 15% responded the same,” (USA Today, 8/17/10). Two of my seminar participants, a DOM & DOS of a large resort indicated that they have between 20 and 30 individual and meeting packages that they are marketing with success. When I asked how so many of these were managed and how they worked, they replied that

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they are marketing to ‘niches’. They have segmented their lists and are making different offers to different ‘niches’. Who are you marketing meetings to – is it ‘one size fits all?’ September 2010 Creating demand! Creating demand is different – it implies that demand is created where none existed prior to the event. Several independent hotels and conference centers that I have worked with find themselves creating demand in the form of ‘special interest’ weekends during their slow seasons. For example, one partners with a local winery or wineries to conduct wine tasting and culinary pairing. Another offers culinary weekends with their chef. “Food tourism -- one recipe for travel success.” Food is among new travel trends that popped up in various recent seminars and trend-seeking meetings,” (Travel Mole, 9/16/10). There is a good reason that the Food Network is so popular! Cornell Study – Three Reasons Why Face to Face Meetings are Important! “…to capture attention, especially for new concepts; to inspire a positive emotional climate; and a related point, to build human networks and relationships," (Cornell, 9/27/10). The study goes on to say that…"Face-to-face meetings possess the unique ability to spur action and drive business results through creating powerful, emotional ties to your business mission and

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message.” In other words, these team meetings are ways to communicate the culture and to develop team spirit. When I was with Sunstone, I instituted team meetings and the rapport and mutual support that occurred as a result was invaluable – and made my job as VP Sales & Marketing easier! The Partnership of Sales and the GM. Ed Watkins in an article in Lodging Hospitality reported on the Lodging Conference form last month. “One of the speakers at last month’s Lodging Conference threw out this statistic: 70 percent of hotels in the U.S. are undermanaged. “ One of the examples that the speaker gave was as follows: “No matter how big the property’s sales staff, or how much res contribution comes from the parent company, a hotel’s primary marketer should always be its general manager. Whether it’s two or 20 hours a week, the GM should be knocking on doors, calling on key customers, attending trade shows and other selling events and serving as the hotel’s chief PR person. Customers are more apt to buy when they’re dealing with the person at the top,” (Ed Watkins, Lodging Hospitality, 10/12/10). GM involvement can be the critical factor in a buying decision! It’s no longer a ‘buyers’ market’! A recent NBTA survey revealed that, “Stemming from a combination of larger travel volumes and rising fares and rates, survey respondents -- all from North America, representing a cross-industry sample -- anticipated that total 2010 travel spending at their organizations

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would be up from last year by an average of 5.5 percent,” the survey said, (Travel Mole, 10/16/10). This is the opportunity to begin pushing up rates. In this recovery, rate has not increased relative to the increased demand. It’s time to test the waters and gain confidence in increasing rates – especially in the leisure and corporate transient sectors. Groups are coming back but very short lead and not at the same pace as the above mentioned segments. Remember – you can always come down on rate if you get ‘push back’ but you can never go up! Independent and boutique hotels have a unique opportunity in that more travelers -- individual, corporate and groups are looking for an experience outside the cookie cutter. The internet and social media level the playing field for independents and boutique properties to increase visibility with potential customers and engage with current customers. I worked with an independent boutique property in a popular destination that was #1 on Trip Advisor in a market dominated by franchises. How did they do it? Staying in touch with past guests through social media and their blog as well as marketing to potential guests through the internet. Develop the plan to market to these segments – demand is picking up!

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November 2010 Permission to say NO! I spoke last week at the PTLA annual meeting in Harrisburg PA and there was a panel composed of Jeff Rudder of Hershey Entertainment and Resorts, Randy Stuart of Milestone Hospitality and Andee Cornelius of the Lancaster Marriott at Penn Square discussed group sales in a recovering economy. One of the questions was about negotiation and closing. The bottom line was that in a recovering economy, it is important to know what the sales and revenue management parameters are for groups in a given time period. If this piece of business doesn’t fit into those parameters, it’s alright to say NO! It’s alright to pass or say we can’t accommodate you this time or offer a referral to another property that might be able to meet the clients’ needs. How liberating is that!

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Shots of Revenue Management Caffeine 

Revenue Managers (“RM”) have been barraged with new distribution channels. There are not only more channels but new ones driven by different technology that were not around two years ago. We have tried in Shots of RM Caffeine to keep you updated and to give you resources to stay informed on what these channels can do for you and your hotel. The biggest challenge RMs have faced is the unrelenting pressure to generate additional revenue while at the same time being coerced into a rate cutting cycle that has been called the ‘race to the bottom’. We have tried to bring you the latest on the statistics and an alternative to rate slashing but the pressure on RMs has been intense. In this recession REVPAR sank to its lowest level since STR began keeping records. As demand has returned, rate is beginning to recover although not at the pace hoped for. We expect to see a surge in rates in 2011 and 2012 that will propel the industry back to profitability. The return to profitability relies on the RM’s ability to drive rate without jeopardizing the fragile return of demand.

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The concepts of rate parity and rate integrity vanished in many cases – victims of expediency trying to do anything to generate demand – even if it was only until the hotel next door dropped their rates to match or undercut yours. We are slowly beginning to recover these concepts. It is the notion of rate parity and rate integrity that, if we can abide by these principles, will keep our customers booking through the hotel web site and feeling less inclined to check the OTAs before booking. For all of you Revenue Managers who came to work every day, faced tremendous stress and continued to make the best decisions given the circumstances, this section is for you.

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February 2009 Look for the opportunities in this economy! RMs, your job is harder than it’s ever been but it is Revenue Management that will enable the industry to maximize rate in this situation. Creatively use your channels to boost revenue. Have a plan for ‘hot dates’ and the channels that produce. It is Revenue Management that will manipulate the channels to get the highest ADR at the lowest cost per reservation. March 2009 The experts, people smarter than me, are indicating that we will see an uptick in leisure drive travel this spring and summer – the road trip is back! Have those compelling value added packages already in the ‘box’ for a spring launch on the OTAs. Don’t wait until the last minute to have them ready for deployment! Forecasting is incredibly tough in this economy – there are no models that fit this situation. RMs, look to non-traditional market intelligence – the trends in load factors at your airport, traffic counts from the DOT for the roads and highways leading to your hotel, inquiries for information from the local visitor’s bureau and the trending on your pay per clicks on the search engines. Good luck – we are all counting on you to extract the best ADR and REVPAR in a difficult situation!

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April 2009 Resist the pressure to lower your rate structure – but cut as many deals and limited time special rates as you can! There are two really good reasons for this. Number 1: Whatever your rate structure is, people will still want a better deal – how low can you go? Number 2: Apart from the fact that lowering the rate structure does not increase incremental demand, when the economy starts to recover it will be much harder to get your rate structure back to where it was before you chopped it! Tell your bosses I said that and have the research to back it up! May 2009 The great American Road Trip is back! Weekend trips are back as an alternative to the week or two week vacation. Travelocity is plugging into this trend. How is your hotel positioned on the OTAs and other platforms to maximize your share of this business? Value adds packages to include events, festivals and other attractions in your areas to make the hotel stand out. Not only are these reservations short lead but look for an increase in walk-ins.

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July 2009 July 4 weekend is over! It’s time to evaluate which initiatives worked for the hotel and drove business and which ones didn’t -- which channels produced and at what cost of reservations. We still have nine weeks until Labor Day weekend – the official end of vacation season. What things can you do in terms of promotions, packages, hot dates and limited time offers to ‘juice up’ the rest of the summer season? Don’t get analysis paralysis! Try a Twitter campaign – if it doesn’t work – move on to something else! Try new promotions and channels and have fun! ADR is not expected to recover until 2012 according to the most recent forecasts from STR and PKF. There are hotels that are bucking that trend. An independent hotel I know is only down in revenue 6.8% from last year. How do they do it? They actively and selectively manage rates by market segment to balance discounts and higher rated opportunities. Try it instead of just following the market in a downward rate spiral! August 2009 GDP for Q2 Is better than expected -- -1%. An economic recovery appears to be firming up. A hotel industry recovery is delayed by the relentless rate cutting in Q1 & Q2. The end to the rate cutting cycle

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begins with you – put a bottom under the rate structure, rates by market segment that you won’t go below. I’ve said it and so have so many others – it’s about value not rate. Peter Yesawich said it well “…the consumer today is absolutely looking for better value,” but “ … they’re not looking for something cheaper—just something they couldn’t otherwise afford.” You may sell fewer rooms but generate more revenue! September 2009 Okay – discounts are now a part of the sales and revenue management function. In a recent TravelClick web cast, it graphically demonstrated how those hotels and markets that discount less end up with a higher REVPAR but when ‘flow thorough’ or paying the debt service is an issue the pressure is intense. Market share will now be the driver of REVPAR for the foreseeable future. The sales and revenue management plan needs to include a ‘bottom’ for how much you will discount by channel based on the comp set but also on the cost of reservation from the various channels. Discount but do so with profitability in mind and a plan in place! There is a saying that when you find yourself in a hole – stop digging! That could apply to the discounting in our industry. There is a difference between ‘smart’ discounting by market segment and simply following the market down – allowing the

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‘heavy discounters’ to dictate the market. A recent Cornell study indicated that they found luxury and upscale hotels trading into the midscale segment and midscale without out F&B ADRs thereby placing themselves into a new comp set. Is that where you want to be? How low can you go – into what ADR determined comp set? The lower you go now the longer is it will take you to ‘dig out’ your rate when the recovery comes. October 2009 The next 45 days! In terms of corporate travel the Starwood CFO anticipates that 'The next six weeks are very critical in my point of view,’ said Chief Financial Officer Vasant Prabhu during a presentation at Deutsche Bank's leveraged finance conference. It is 'the first indicator of what next year's trends look like,’ (Forbes, 10/01/09). However, the results will be different from market to market just as summer and September results are spotty by markets and not uniform. Sales and revenue managers need to ensure that reservations and the front desk are coding corporate guests uniformly. This will be the only way that you can measure the return of corporate travel to your market. This is a very important indicator to have if you are to evaluate what the demand for the end of ‘09 and the first five months of ‘10 may look like in the fragile economic recovery.

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Google and Bing to include Twitter in search engine results! This announcement last week can be a potential game changer for hotels! While the search engines haven’t quite decided which Tweets will be included or their ‘weight’ and importance, they will appear on the results page, it means that if you have Tweeted any promotions they will likely appear or if there were positive or negative Tweets about the property, those will probably be included as well. It is unclear what Tweets will appear when our customers enter ‘hotels (fill in the destination)’ which is the most common search engine request on the search engines and why we spend so much money on SEO to ensure good page placement for the hotel’s web site. However, what is clear is that if your competition is Tweeting and you’re not you may be at a disadvantage. The time to become Twitter savvy is now before Google and Bing sort it out -- probably just in time for the spring and summer leisure travel season! November 2009 As much as many hotels feel a love/hate relationship with Expedia, research results were published this week to prove what they have always maintained -- that ‘for every reservation made on Expedia, another is made through the hotel web site.’ If ever there was an example of the OTA as travel search engine and the ‘electronic billboard effect’ this is it. The study and

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the corresponding graph illustrated the percentage increases in reservations to four hotels’ web sites when they appeared on Expedia and when they didn’t or were dark on Expedia. The increases in reservations to the hotel’s web site when they appeared on Expedia ranged from 7-26% -- the 26% increase was for an independent hotel. Expedia is still the ‘Big Dog’ in the OTA space – like it or not. January 2010 Have you always wanted your own mobile app? Are you a smaller or independent hotel that needs/wants its own mobile app to communicate with customers and compete with the large companies and franchises? This could be the solution for you. www.movitas.com February 2010 Social networks are not just for sales anymore! They have become distribution channels in the revenue management process. They allow RMs to push out promotions and packages without the commission – they’re free. Bonuses in today’s expense sensitive environment. Tracking and measuring the effectiveness of each doesn’t need to have sophisticated software -- it can be done the old fashioned way by making the offers unique to the channel. RMs – give me your feedback on how you

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have integrated social networks into your distribution process. March 2010 Outrageous! Do something to set you apart from all the other hotels! Get a video cam, Flip or another one. Gather the team including the GM in the lobby of the hotel and talk to the planner — have the GM offer a personal guarantee that if they book their meeting at your hotel, it will perfect! (Be prepared to deliver!) Send the link to the video to the planner! Put a smile on their face – we all like to do business with and hang out with people that make us smile! Do we think any less of Google for changing up their logo to reflect the serious and the humorous? Does it make us smile – yes! Nope, they are still a serious search engine! Rate wars still continue – although ADRs are dropping at a ‘less bad’ rate than last year. How do you know if you have gone too low? When the guests populating the lobby are not the guests you typically had prior to the recession and they won’t be the guests that will be there when the rates inevitably increase! When your ADR suggests that you should be participating in a STR comp set two rungs down the ladder from your product category! When the hotel begins to show wear and tear that will negatively impact rates when the recovery kicks

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in and you are not generating enough revenue to give it a ‘touch up’! April 2010 As though we didn’t have enough distribution channels to manage, along comes Google with their Beta on showing rates on Google maps with ‘search’. If a customer searches for hotels at a destination, the Google map that appears will feature rates as well as location. Everyone knows that in major destinations, the OTAs and aggregators own most of the first page relegating the hotel web sites to the second page. The same players also dominate the sponsored results. To have your rates in the balloon on Google maps, it is a pay to play situation. It will state somewhere that these are sponsored results. How rates and dates will be managed is still nuclear but the bottom line is that Google will become a new distribution channel that will need to be managed with implications for the OTAs and the aggregators.

Demand is up by 5% in March and rates are beginning to follow. This bodes well for the summer season. A new study that appeared in TravelMole indicated that “An amazing ninety-two percent of travelers with children plan to take at least one family vacation this year, up from 88 percent who did so last year, according to a new study by TripAdvisor,” (TravelMole, 3/31/10). What strategies

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have you put into place to capture your fair share of this demand? How many family packages have you developed to attract families to you area and your hotel and how are marketing them on the OTAs and social networks or ads on Family and Mom based web sites?

May 2010 Is Google about to become the biggest OTA ever? Let’s have a think about this. Expedia has maintained that it is a travel search engine and when a hotel disappears from the Expedia screen the reservations made through a hotel’s web site drop by 26%! (HotelMarketing.com, 11/20/09). So imagine the power of a mega search engine that channels “… (51%) of all business travel related searches), followed by the hotel website (40%), the airline website (35%) and general travel sites such as TripAdvisor (28%),” (HotelMarketing.com, Times Online, 05/11/10). If I were an aggregator like Kayak, I would be very afraid. Expedia has enough ‘heft’ to survive although they will probably lose market share. If I were one of the many smaller OTAs, like Orbitz or even Travelocity I would be working on a unique value strategy called ‘survival’. Demand continuing to increase – rate continuing to decrease! Demand has had impressive increases in the past two months – April increased by 4.7% and March posted a hefty 5%

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increase. However, ADRs continue to decrease from 2009 which was arguably the worst year in the hotel industry, (Smith Travel, Hotel News Now). The paradox is that the luxury segment is leading the way out of the recession with increased occupancy in double digits although ADRs have decreased to just around $300. Revenue managers – there are markets like New York that have managed to increase their rates in response to the increasing demand. The luxury segment of the industry is proof that the issue with rates is all about perceived value not about rate! What are we going to do about it? June 2010 Rate Integrity and Rate Parity. I don’t know if there is right or wrong answer here as necessity has indicated the ‘dumping’ of unused inventory on the opaque channels. This is a little story of trust and integrity. I went online to book an airline ticket on the United Airlines site that states that the customer will not find lower fares on any other site. The fare was almost $600. So I tried to save my client some money and went to Priceline where I haven’t ever booked an airline ticket before. The fare to the same destination with a better schedule was only $300. Granted, United posted in its lower fare column the same fare but the flight schedule was for flights leaving at ungodly hours and with hideous layovers. Maybe I was naive to believe that United meant what it said but it taught me one thing — now I will always

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check on Priceline prior to booking another ticket. Does your hotel have a similar lowest rate guarantee on your web site? Will your customers find lower rates on Priceline and the other opaque’s? Seth Godin recently posed the question in a blog post ‘what if there were no new customers’. The answer was then ‘maybe we better take really good care of the ones we already have’. In the rush to offer push out the lowest rates and try to increase market share, a somewhat failed strategy, we often forget to make our best offers to our repeat and former guests. From a purely dollars and cents standpoint, our loyal guests are less expensive to keep than the cost of acquiring a new guest. Converting a new guest that was lured in by super low rate is difficult at best if these guests are always chasing the lowest rate. Before offering a super low rate to everyone on Twitter or the opaque channels, marketing our best deals to our loyal repeat guests only makes cents (I couldn’t help myself). They will be the ones that are still around when the ‘super deals’ are gone! July 2010 The July 4 holiday is over and it’s time to evaluate from both a revenue management and sales perspective, which strategies worked to drive demand and rate and which didn’t live up to expectations. There are six more weekends

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of summer demand before the kids start going back to school – it’s not too late to adjust your strategies and evaluate the productivity and net revenue generated by the distribution channels. Today would be an excellent day to do that! Google buys ITA! “ITA currently provides airfare data to many of the industry players, including Orbitz, Kayak and Bing; … The businesses that are most likely to be hit soonest are those known as travel meta-search engines, like Kayak and Bing Travel. … Google itself said on its site that it “has no plans to sell airline tickets to consumers,” (Wall Street Journal, 7/5/10). However, 10% of all Google searches are travel related. With Google already testing featured hotel rates on ‘searches’, the addition of the functionality of researching air fares could make Google a major force in online travel and Kayak should be very afraid. September 2010 It is still unclear the rate of economic growth or if the economy will slip back into recession. Having two strategies in place for each alternative allows the RM to shift seamlessly when the market intelligence indicates which is happening in the larger economy and the consumer trends. This complicates the Revenue Management strategies that were just put in place a month ago! The point is to develop an alternative strategy for the worst case scenario. The

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worse time to develop a strategy is when there is crisis of the unexpected! Put together a ‘strategy in the box’ for the worst case scenario that you can roll out if needed. Resist the urge to think radical rate cutting is the only answer!

Google maps and mobile apps – two new distribution channels that we didn’t have to worry about last year! Mobile apps have demonstrated that they have become a valuable new reservation channel and have the potential of generating incremental revenue from in house guests. Is your res engine on the web site up to the task? Is it mobile friendly and how will it appear on a mobile device screen? The second thing is Google maps exhibiting hotel rates on destination searches. Google maps are going to be a huge player in travel search and will drive business to those hotels that maintain parity and updates on offerings on all channels including the mobile app!

It sounds like an election year – hoteliers are fed up and they’re not going to take it anymore! The objects of their anger are the OTAs and Trip Advisor – both of are facing potential law suits from the hotel community. The first due to issues with paying lodging taxes but the underlying source of anger is the high fees that hoteliers are paying the OTAs in their merchant models. The second issue with Trip Advisor is the veracity of the posted reviews. In the recession, hotels rushed to the OTAs especially the opaque’s like Priceline in an

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attempt to ‘dump’ unsold inventory at the expense of any semblance of rate parity. It is the multiplicity of rates on various channels that drove the rate conscious consumer to the OTAs. In terms of online reviews, at least hotels have an opportunity to respond to Trip Advisor reviews unlike those on the OTAs. Yes, it is an election year and it is our customers that voted with their mouse to use both TripAdvisor and the OTAs!

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Shots of Motivation 

When times are tough we all need a ‘byte’ of motivation – whether it is a book, a CD or a phrase that we can repeat to ourselves to stay positive. Using the time in your daily commute to listen to a motivational download, CD or music is a great way to help you feel revved. Take care of yourself and your motivational level. At lunch, take a break and read an article that energizes your brain, watch a video on TED. Give your brain a break by giving it some mental aerobics, brain candy to refresh it and reset it. When you do that your thinking becomes clearer for the rest of the day. Remaining positive has been difficult but things are looking up! A positive attitude is viral – it spreads among everyone around it. Peers and clients are drawn to those that are positive in the face of all odds. We all enjoy being in the presence of positive people – spread the optimism and may be land a new client! For those days when it doesn’t feel like things are looking up, there is this section on motivation. We hope it helps all of you hotel ‘warriors’ out there who come to work every day and make it happen!

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February 2009 Celebrate victories! Find opportunities to giggle and laugh out loud as a team – it will keep your perspective healthy so you can creatively think of new prospects and ways to approach and close them! March 2009 There is a saying that ‘whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Those sales people that stay motivated and tough it out in this economy will be the ‘rock stars’ of the industry when this economy begins to recover! Take a deep breath and ‘rock your world!’ April 2009 It’s easy to get discouraged making calls in this economy. The contact blows you off – doesn’t respond to your messages or emails, etc. Take a 15 minute break. Find someone in your office or a friend who is also discouraged and give them some words of encouragement. They’ll feel better and you will find yourself listening to your own words and encouraging yourself!

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May 2009 The secret of The Secret! Millions of people plugged into the book, the CDs and the pod casts of The Secret which essentially said that if you project what you want and focus on it the Universe will send it your way. The secret of The Secret is that when you develop a positive outlook, the chemical changes in your brain will lead you to feel better, think differently and open up to solutions rather than focus on challenges. Whatever motivational material that helps you feel more positive will work. Choose one or two to read or listen to that makes your brain open to solutions when things are difficult! June 2009 Denials – a slippery but necessary metric for Revenue Managers. Denials from call centers and direct phone reservations are not totally accurate due to the human factor but can provide trending. Drill into web site analytics, especially for independents. If a transaction is not completed after the visitor enters the reservation process on the site, it should count as a denial. Compare it to conversions and the difference is the ‘denial factor’ that gives us trending in terms of ‘push back’ on rates, rate fences and availability. Imperfect but better than nothing!

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October 2009 Survivors! If you are reading this you are a survivor and probably a thriver. I received a newsletter this week that had an article that I unfortunately deleted but the message was ‘congratulations, you’ve made it through the toughest part of the recession. If you do nothing else, formulate three new strategies for the next 30, 60, 90 days.’ Take a moment to congratulate yourself for the hard work you’ve done and prepare for the next two quarters. Do more of what’s been successful, develop creative strategies to steal share and develop new business. 2010 won’t be walk in the park but it will be better that 2009! December 2009 Things are slowing down a bit with your clients for the holidays. Now is the time to get those things off of your to-do list that have been put on the back burner. Take the time to build out your profile on the social networks and add quality contacts to your professional network. Explore other networks and internet platforms that you may not be currently active on. Update your hotel’s listing on the social networks and figure out a way to be more visible. If you have not built out a blog for your hotel – take the time to do it now! If you need a better to-do list than that piece of paper you are using now, try this one called Teuxdeux. It is simple and really cool, totally

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free and may be just the thing to get you organized! I found it about it on Seth Godin’s blog. January 2010 Why do we love the Progressive Insurance chic? She approaches the customer in her ‘store’, she smiles, she has a ‘giggle’ in her voice or what a GM of mine used to call ‘sugar in her voice’. She then engages the customer, qualifies them and gets them excited by being slightly playful with the customer. Even if we don’t rush to buy Progressive Insurance, we have a positive impression of the company’s culture and will maybe consider them if we become discontented with our current provider. All of this in a 60 second commercial – WHEW! How many ‘Progressive Chics’ or Guys do you have on your guest experience team? February 2010 Seth Godin’s blog is one of the most inspirational things that come into to my Inbox every day. With a recovery beginning to produce green shoots, we all need to focus on innovating, generating ideas and being prepared that some of these ideas will not make it but many others will. Instead of being afraid of generating ideas that ‘fail’ we should embrace them as we learn more from our failures than we do from our successes. See below a

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recent blog post from Seth about Tim Burton. “Tim Burton's projects. Here's the guy who's responsible for some of the most breathtaking movies of his generation, and the real surprise is this: almost every year over the last thirty, he worked on one or more exciting projects that were never green lighted and produced. Every year, he spent an enormous amount of time on failed projects. The other: fail. Fail often. Dream big and don't make it. Not every time, anyway.” Forward this one to the GM! In honor of Valentine’s Day, we ask the question – when was the last time your GM showed your clients and potential clients ‘the love’? Sales are always out there taking ‘goodies’, saying thank you. When was the last time the GM picked up the phone, called all of the top accounts and said ‘thank you for your business?’ You see the client sees the GM as the person that is all powerful in the hotel – it’s the power of the position. A ‘thank you’ from the GM might mean a lot to current clients and could ’tip’ the decision of a potential client. So forward this to the GM and ask the GM to show your clients ‘the love’. Happy Valentine’s Day! March 2010 After an amazing hockey game, the Olympics are done! The thing that stands out in my mind are the stories of what some of these athletes overcame

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just to be there. Steve Holcomb, driver of the four man bob sled that won gold, overcame temporarily losing his eyesight. Apolo Ohno overcame losing his mother when she left the family when he was a young child and no one can forget the courage of Joannie Forchette who skated for the Bronze medal three days after her mother passed away. My first sales manager for my first job out of college asked me one question I’ll never forget, “What in your life have you overcome?” When I got the job I asked him why? He said that if you have overcome something significant in your life you are a better sales person because you know that you can ‘overcome’ the challenges inherent in sales. I used that question when interviewing every sales person for a job when I was a VP of Sales. Think about it – what in your life have you overcome? Plug into whatever it was and use that to propel you to success in these difficult economic times! I met a woman who was a participant in a seminar that I conducted last week who uses her Facebook wall to generate business and stay in touch with her accounts. Sabrina (you know who you are!) uses her wall to let her fans/clients know when she will be making sales calls in their area so that she can stop in and/or take care of any hotel business they have pending. She has also booked several tour groups from fans communicating with her on her Facebook wall. How does she do it? She has built her base of fans from her customers and accounts, both local and out of

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town. The magic is in the network of fans that she has built! April 2010 Flying! Have you ever wanted to do indoor skydiving? I did and for my birthday my husband gave me an indoor skydiving experience. It’s not as easy as it looks but it is very liberating experience. For few minutes, you defy gravity – you soar! You also can sink if your form isn’t always right but then you soar again! The soaring outweighs the ‘sinking’ to the floor of the chamber. It’s a lot like sales and RM in this economy – if the ‘form’ isn’t right you can sink but the lesson here is that you soar again! Soaring gives you the confidence to overcome the sinking. Soar today – find an area where you can take the risk. If you sink, know that you can soar again! May 2010 Did anyone watch the Kentucky Derby on Saturday? There is a lesson to be learned for sales in seeing those horses give it their best in the pouring rain. I remember as a new hotel sales manager, I informed my boss that I wouldn’t be going out on calls because it was raining that day. He replied that weather was no excuse – sales calls can be postponed for any number reasons. He added, “If

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this sales job were easy everyone could do it and you don’t see anyone lined up behind you, do you?” Message received loud and clear. Do you think the horses in the Derby would have preferred a sunny day with a dry track – of course they would! Did they have choice –absolutely not! So the next times you are tempted to say “I can’t make sales calls to day (fill in the blanks)” just get out there and do it! I had the great pleasure of speaking at the hugely successful Michigan Lodging Association’s annual meeting this week for the third time. The event was held at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island that permits no motorized vehicles, is not easy to get to and is certainly on the upper end of rates. (It is the only hotel I have ever been in, and I have experienced many fine resorts, that served breakfast hors d’oeuvres!) This hotel is not exceptional only for their product but also for the seasonal employees that they hire. The Grand brings in and trains team members from all over the world. When was the last time you were at a banquet for 300 where the each course was served within five minutes to every guest? The plates were cleared and the banquet team walked out in a line with their trays held high and the guests applauded. Can your banquet staff do that and if they could, how much could increase your catering revenue? When was the last time a banquet party applauded your team?

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June 2010 Differentiation. How do hotels differentiate themselves? There is a reason that the luxury sector and boutique hotels are leading the industry out of the recession – they offer a unique experience apart from the franchised ‘boxes’. Is the Frequent Guest program sufficient to differentiate a hotel when the major franchises are saturating most markets with multiple products? Following a seminar last week, we identified another point of differentiation, especially in the group market, that sales people can use. That factor is being customer centric. Customer centricity is totally different from customer service. Customer centricity has to do with researching a potential client before the approach is ever made. Customer centric is about understanding what industry the potential customer is in, their company and what their challenges are using other client experiences in the same or similar industries with the hotel to appeal to them. This lets them know how your hotel and you, the sales professional, can provide a solution. So forget the bullet points and focus on the client before you ever begin to present the property! July 2010 Hotel demand rose to a new historical increase of 8.7% in Q2 this year! WOW! Yeah, but are most hotels ready after almost two years of cutting back on staff and services? Hotels did what they

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needed to do in order to just survive the recession. If demand levels off in the last quarter of this year and the economy slows down, adding staff and services may result in the same strategies. I don’t have the answers but in any case all of you are doing more with less. Those of you that are still standing – still getting up, going to work and making it happen every day deserve giant ‘thank you’ from your companies and from the entire industry as whole! So THANK YOU for making it happen every day!