NASHVILLE, Tennessee — The demands on hotel revenue managers have grown even over the past five years, with guest behavior changing in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and technology such as artificial intelligence altering the job in fundamental ways.
Experts speaking at the 17th annual Hotel Data Conference said the next generation of revenue experts will need to come into the job with a higher degree of technical proficiency and will need mentoring to understand the shifting landscape.
Kathleen Cullen, executive vice president of PTG Consulting, described the ideal young revenue manager as: "Somebody who is technically astute but also strategically focused. Somebody who likes to troubleshoot, who will continue to dig until they find the answer, and somebody who can really sit at the table and have a voice and guide the team into the right types of strategies."
But that type of expert isn't created overnight. Erica Lipscomb, Crescent Hotels & Resorts' senior vice president of revenue strategy, stressed the importance of mentorship and described how her company structures mentorship to tap into the most eager young professionals.
"It's a reverse mentor program," she said. "And the reason I like those is because candidates show they are interested. They are the ones who are going to stay tapped in, stay connected. If you have a forced mentorship program, I find that you lose people quicker because they feel like it's more of a task than their own personal desire."
Crescent drives participation by giving younger employees the opportunity to participate in projects and, based on their enthusiasm, encourage them to follow it up with mentorship, Lipscomb said. She added programs like this are crucial because it's harder today to hire someone without revenue-management experience and train them in revenue-management roles.
"I'm going to be very transparent and honest. When I get 50 applications for one job and you don't have revenue-management experience, I'm not hiring you," she said.
But it's also important to keep an eye on people outside of the hospitality industry with the right skill sets, said Lovell Casiero, senior vice president of commercial strategies for PM Hotel Group.
"So if you know me, you know I spend a lot of time at cosmetic counters, I will recruit people" there, she said. "I just did an interview, and I said I came into this industry not knowing I would get to travel the world because I'm in this industry, and that's the story that we need to be telling. We have all kinds of training and opportunity to bring those people up if the foundation is there."
There's a balance between those two points of view because it's hard to justify to a hotel owner plans to "hire somebody to be a mentee without them having a full-time job" but there need to be pathways to develop new talent, Cullen said. She added it comes down to finding skilled and eager young people and fitting them in the right junior role to grow in.
"We have the luxury of really working with a wide variety of different clients, and we meet a lot of up-and-comers, so we hire them as an analyst or a systems person, and we pair them up with some of our strong revenue directors who have a lot of experience," Cullen said. "And right now, I have four people on my team that started there, and now they are leading revenue strategy calls, and they're getting really good results."
Lynn Zwibak, founder of Zwibak Revenue Management and an instructor at Virginia Tech’s Master’s in Hospitality & Tourism Management program, said young people can tap into industry resources such as HSMAI to "gain as much exposure to revenue management as you possibly can before even approaching a company."
"We're finding that [HSMAI's certification program] is great for entry-level professionals or professionals who just want to learn revenue management," she said.
Artificial intelligence shifts discipline
The art of hotel revenue management has been shifting over the past decade with the rise of automation putting more focus on revenue managers driving strategy, and panelists said that evolution will continue in the era of AI.
It's now incumbent on all hotel commercial strategy teams to have an adoption strategy in place for AI, Lipscomb said.
"We've all been to [hotel industry conferences], and we've talked about AI for two years, and I'm like 'We really need to roll out an AI adoption policy.' So I'm laughing now because even last night at dinner with my boss, I was saying 'We need an AI adoption policy,'" she said.
There are various ways AI will affect the hospitality industry, from consumer adoption to internal automation and how it will shift platforms such as online travel agencies, Cullen said.
"It's moving at such a rapid rate, it's actually scary," she said.
The challenge of retention
A hotel company's work isn't done simply after helping a young revenue manager grow into an expert, and panelists said it's key to provide them pathways for career growth and tools to help keep them in the fold.
Lipscomb said it's vital to develop a supportive culture across revenue teams, considering many on property are a team of one and area revenue managers will often work from home. She added it's important to have regular contact to help them feel connected to the team.
"You have to be really intentional about those daily and weekly check-ins," she said.
Direct feedback is vital along with making sure people are set up to succeed in their roles, Cullen said.
"If you don't give direct feedback, then there's a misalignment of expectations and misunderstandings, and things can fester," she said.
Panelists agreed that hotel companies have to demonstrate pathways to career growth to keep their best employees.
Cullen added it's also about developing a varied team that can provide different skills and outlooks.
"What I have found to be very successful is to really set up your organizational structure so you have a variety of experts in areas: So you have strategic experts, technical experts, distribution experts, analyst experts, and they all work together as one big team and support each other," she said.