Sales and Marketing in the Hotel/Resort Business 21st Century

An old dog loves a new trick someone once said, and at this age, I tire of catching on to fast trains, the spin of the earth, dumb kids, machines that think for me, and children in suits that form personal relationships with green globes glowing in the corners of sales offices, easier than they do with me.
     As a fledgling salesman in my early 20's I learned by watching, listening and emulating those older, better than me and soon crafted a professional attitude that fed, clothed a wife, two daughters and myself through adulthood, and on, out of the house. The younger generation of sales and marketing people detached from any kind of personable connection to people attached themselves to techno babble, computers, gadgets, and roamed the world with eyes searching the world like bright, cole shiny headlights on oversized Buicks.
    In hotels, the difference was more obvious in that the more mature sales people were more expensive, higher salaries, commissions, bonuses, perks, and since they had been in the chairs longer, had earned respect not yet achieved by the yearlings.
    The youngers were mostly female, very good looking, cheaply bought, caught the eyes of management, knew little and were assigned for training to guys like me. Lots of guys like me.
    As the world turns, computers in, children love the gadgets, the technology of the new world began a new era in sales and marketing and the art of sales and marketing - personal contact, a connection with the customers of the hotel or resort - faded away.
    Comes the new change in our society - the Obama generation, he of the walking on water, things are going to change - and indeed they did. The economy tanks, corporate world recedes, sales staffs everywhere in everything get eviscerated (in hospitality especially) and the kids are back in restaurants serving pizza and spaghetti on shift work.
     Today, most of those glamorous hi-rise hotels, spiffy, tony resorts in the foothills are runny empty, missing their mortgage payments, having their "debts" re-organized, or out in the market looking for someone to buy them before they get re-possessed. They are ALL in trouble. Working in sales and marketing in the hospitality industry is as dead and/or dying as being in sales for the Airline industry. You can read about it in the history books.
     It was fun while it lasted. It's over
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The Future of Hotels - LOOK OUT !!

I started in this business back in the early 70's when it was practice to elevate restaurant waitresses into sales offices because they were pretty, wore short skirts and would drop brochures off at surrounding offices.

    Waitresses, God bless them, were offered substandard salaries, often harassed by their management, possessed little knowledge of the law, were abused and the turnover was high. 

    Since then, as the politicos say, we have "evolved." Marketing has been dragged out of college class rooms into hospitality, sales has been over taught in the hotel industry, and in the intervening years, staffs have grown, the science has increased the profits of the industry, and sometimes, under limited circumstance - the money generators responsible for the revenue, the sales people.

    Management has consistently considered sales people akin to the "rowers" in the hold following the drum beat. Metaphorically, when the captain sees the water level rising, the rowers will inevitably get thrown over the side, still attached to their chain.

    The Obama induced panic drive, Socialist economic slide toward oblivion we are now embracing as a nation, I fear has so ruined the economy, that the cyclical nature of the "hotel business" may be inextricably been wounded fatally. 

    The Halcyon days are gone. Thick sales staffs and their luscious expense accounts, travel budgets I believe are pared down forever. Here in Tucson, Arizona, a microcosm of reality, now, even the luxurious resorts, once touted as above the fray, are in deep trouble financially, and are up for sale at bargain prices. 

    Once Tauted Marriott resorts, Weston, and others, deeply nestled high in the mountains high over the city, are all flagging and losing money. When the ship goes down, the masthead is the last to slip below the waves. 

    These resorts are indeed the masthead. They will indeed draw a bargain price for some future owner albeit a bank, finance company or some foreign dignitary, Arab, or financier. 

    Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, a career in the pretigious hospitality industry was a much sought after profession. To be a "hotelier" was fashionable, classical, and provided an excellent career. 

    Not now. Those days are gone, in my opinion. To work in the hospitality business, in any white collar capacity, one should have an attitude that the position is only temporary. Hold onto it while you are still seeking a more firm form of employment elsewhere, hopefully not in a hotel. And, never, never work for a "management" company - not ever. 

    If you are applying for a white collar job in a hotel or a resort, do your homework, check the backgrounds of the General Manager, the company who owns or runs it. Ask if they are attaining their budgets. If not, why not? If they don't answer you, run for the door. 

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Hotel Workers - victims of a Fuedal Empire

A recent Wall Street Journal article, and length one at that, outlined a lawsuit and an effort of the lowest paid hotel employees to unionize to upgrade their working conditions in their industry.
     Hotel workers aree behind the scenes, not often seen by the guest: dish washers laundry, mechanics, garden staff, pool maintenance, bar tenders, - I could bore one with the list. The larger the hotel or resort, the staff list grows.
     As I have said, Hospitality is the last feudal management system left in this modern day chauvanistic free-enterprise system. What the General Manager says, is law. Sure, there are federal, state and local laws, but I assure you,  they are cleverly broken, every day, in practically every lodging establishment in America by every titular head of the house.
     And, cleverly, too. I've seen it, heard it, been in the room, participated in Board meetings, watched it happen. As a former hotel and resort General Manager I never participated in any such nonsense, cooperated fully with my various staffs and enjoyed a wonderful working relations while I worked ALONGSIDE them during their various jobs.
     I hope and pray their hotel workers, the minimum wage job holders in that industry are successful in gaining a foot hold in struggle for recognition, fair play, fair PAY, and better working condition because they are NOT getting it now.
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Bankrupt Hotels and Resorts

It may be me, I could wrong, but I tire of reading about what was once "high class" resorts in the tony foothills of Tucson, Arizona no up for sale, missing their mortgage payments, in foreclosure or, facing bankruptcy.
      Back in the days before " the flood," here in America, when one chose the hospitality field for a career, especially in management, it was considered a classy career move.
      It is my opinion that something bad happened: the industry began to make a lot of money - tons of it. I was in marketing management at the time. It was EASY. Long story short - everybody got greedy. Hotel management was never very good, over zealous accounts at best, really. And, everyone in marketing knows what an accountant's wild night out is - a third glass of wine.
      Anyway, the tide of the industry turned slowly, but definitely away from a "calling" of Hostelry, that of being a vocation - Innkeeper, to just being an investment. That's all, you just bought something at a low price, then sold it at a higher price and pocketed the difference, or re-invested it into something else.
      These land-sharks got so slick, the fins in the water got so fast, they would just announce they were breaking ground for a hotel and someone would offer to buy the land, a developer, maybe, and they would sell out at sometimes a 50% profit before they even turned a spade of dirt. Frenzy.
      The dot-com bubble in early 2002 blew that out the window. That hit the crapper and it hasn't been nose up since. The spiral has been downward since, tourism has never recovered, sales departments are ghost towns, and with this stupid economy it's any one's guess if it ever gets better.
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Things Corporate Hotel Auditors Tell me About Sales

While in town doing an audit on their southwest installation of one of the best resorts, once classified as in the "best ten in the world" we chatted under the wing of a B-17.
     "Things are awful, everywhere," he told me. Like I didn't already know. The local newspaper satisfies itself writing stories about rat-poop in  restaurants and picking nose-hairs out of the county supervisors lunch boxes for "high-profile news stories and on occasion, prints declining tax receipts from area hotels proving they are drowning in debt.
      Anyone who has ever been in the business or close to it knows when the water circles the drain. Management ALWAYS lies when confronted. Even the newsprint guys are smart enough to know that.
      Anywho, said auditor opines that when the water level in the lifeboat rises, the survivors watch the captain cut the notch on the inside of the boat. " Sales is always the first to go," he says.
      No kidding, I retort. Hotel Management has always been rooted in the 13th Century, the dungeons of the chain mail dark ages. Any monkey can sit on their wallet, it's quite easy to train them to do that. So the water finally hits the notch on the inside of the boat, and if the Sales Department has the smarts to have already warmed up their collective resumes, the captain "invites them to get wet.
      If not, that's what the knife is for. If he is any kind of human being, the surgery is done quietly, in his office$. Usually not, though.
      Remember Esquire Magazine's "Stanley Bing"? Everything he ever wrote was true, on point, and I can verify. I was there. The bloodletting (an expression usually coined by mass firings) was done at this point in the hotel biz: Sales first, throat cuts, over board.
     Then Marketing followed by advertising - a General Manager I once knew said, " I guess a sales person is like a billboard, you never really know what value they give you." He started as a cook, then a bell boy, front desk clerk, and so on.
     Another general manager I once knew told me the biggest mistake he ever made was telling the head of the sales department, Yes! He was a chef.
     The Chief Executive Officer (the 'big guy') of a major hotel management company headquartered in the Dallas Fort Worth area never ran a hotel.
      There are creative ways to remedy the disastrous slump in hospitality: don't treat hotels and resorts as investment vehicles. In Europe, they were once known as careers, institutions of learning, creations of a hospitality experience. Their goal was NOT just profit.
      Lastly, sales is the generator of traffic, these are the people who should be kept on to the last. If they are utilized , new and more creative measures can bring in to add to the revenue base.
      But, then again, Management has got to have the creativity to try it. The 7 unholy words need to be scuttled.
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Hi Profile Big Bucks Resorts ....The end??

I met a Controller, Auditor....from New York in town to re-work the books of one of the country's big high finance high dollar resorts of this town here in Arizona.
    When we talked, quietly in a corner over a coke, I explained my background now retired, in his business.
     " things are tough - all over, " he said. The economy has hit everyone hard. Occupancies and revenue are tough to come by.
     Sitting in the B-17 Museum here in Tucson, I meet a wide variety of people from across the nation and the world and engage in deep conversations of intense interest.
     It's always the people who work the numbers who tell you the truth. Management will never tell you. They lie. They always lie. When revenues are down, he said, they always fire the sales staffs, then the move up  to Marketing, then advertising, and lastly - front desk clerks
     Any idiot can sit on his wallet.
     All the high end resorts in this town  are in rough shape, he said.
     This we know, I told him. Our wonderful newspaper is covering the story pretty thoroughly.
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Hotel Careers in Sales & Marketing - It's Over

If you define target markets by segments, a decent size sales staff and a well educated Marketing Director with years of education and experience behind him/her: if you mean a reasonable operating budget for sales people and a computerized sales operation and intrnet sophistication.
      If, in the lexicon, of the 21st Century business vocabulary of the hostelry lexicon, a nation-wide
positive search and destroy mission objective of the top leadership and the connection between operations management and the marketing department is hand-in-glove: yes, hotel careers in America have had it.
     It is truly over.
     General Management of htels and resorts in America have usually been operations or food and beverage/kitchen troops directly out of the trenches. They are experts at counting dollars, cents, spoons, overages, losses in quarters, percentage points, and napkins.
     Scratch their hairlines, and underneath you will find a frustrated sales person. They all feel the same way about their sales departments:

• I can do it as good as they can without them, or
• I do it without them and save their salaries.

Neither of which is true, but, unfortunately, they never believe you, will ultimately in bad economic times will have to find out the hard way.

     The economy is as bad in the Hotel and Resort sales and marketing side for so long, there appears to be no end in sight. Economic indicators and the John Kenneth Galbraiths of the country prognosticate no turnaround this year, at least, so, those that hang on, are doomed to....well, endure the unpleasantness and/or termination at will.
     You heard it here, first.
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