Hotel marketing teams typically focus on attracting audiences and bookings, rather than helping the sales team generate business and events for the hotel. Achieving group and event revenue targets can have a direct impact on any hotel’s annual performance. However, most hotel sales departments receive little support from marketing teams when it comes to generating clients in the MICE segment and for groups in general. The same applies to the corporate segment, which receives very little support from marketing departments that are more focused on generating leisure guest bookings. This is a significant missed opportunity that should be taken into account, as it could have a major impact on revenue, especially during periods of low demand. What lies behind this strange phenomenon? In almost every other industry, the marketing department is responsible for building relationships with ALL of a company’s audiences, segments and markets. Why has the hotel industry evolved to a point where group, event and convention sales teams have to fend for themselves, while their colleagues in marketing devote their budgets and resources to attracting individual guest business? From my point of view, several factors have led to this unusual evolution: Lack of B2B marketing expertise: most hotel marketing departments are trained in traditional business-to-consumer marketing techniques, commonly known as B2C. Very few business schools teach B2B best practices, which are based on a completely different approach from B2C. Complexity of measuring results: people who understand B2B marketing are experts at setting up systems to measure marketing’s value to the business. However, those unfamiliar with it who attempt to venture into B2B lead generation are often intimidated by the complexity of building a lead-generation pipeline and tracking leads through to closed business. Channel disparity: there is a significant difference between the number of channels, media and marketing tools available to hotel advertisers to attract end consumers and those available to accelerate the flow of hotel group sales opportunities, which are fewer, less well known and far more specialised. The leadership paradox: many hotel companies have separate marketing and sales teams. This naturally leads to separate budgets, responsibilities and resources. On the other hand, when both departments are brought together under one person or department, more resources and effort tend to be devoted to the area with which they are most familiar. Lack of communication: due to organisational separation and the marked difference in KPIs, hotel marketing teams often have very little communication with their counterparts in the sales department. Marketing leaders generally do not share their capabilities, while sales departments do not communicate their needs or periods of low occupancy.

Some basic steps for improvement

When viewed as a whole, the problem is indeed substantial, but there are three fundamental steps hotel marketing departments can take to create synergy and make an impact on results. 1. Take responsibility Hotel marketers must confidently take responsibility and include the generation of business opportunities for the Events, Groups and Conventions department among their core responsibilities. In many ways, generating opportunities in this segment can even be easier, as well as more profitable. The value of a client in this segment is much higher and lasts far longer over time. Hotel marketers should also bear in mind that by taking responsibility for generating business opportunities, they significantly increase their own value within the organisation. They may even gain greater recognition and better compensation as a result :) 2. Start Working with High-Value Targets (HVTs) The hotel marketing team should immediately adopt the basic principles of account-based marketing and create a list of its top 100 high-value target clients. Many hotel sales teams already work with Business Intelligence companies or tools to identify the most relevant opportunities. However, the hotel marketing team must ensure that these HVTs are uploaded into a simple CRM platform in order to send a steady stream of content that will ensure the hotel is considered by event planners when they are preparing proposals for a meeting in the destination. [caption id="attachment_244534" align="aligncenter" width="687"] High-Value Target Marketing[/caption]  

[caption id="attachment_244535" align="aligncenter" width="671"] Traditional Marketing[/caption]   These charts illustrate the shift hotel marketers need to make when pursuing HVTs and supporting the sales department. 3. Talk Holding regular cross-departmental meetings works wonders in fostering cooperation and integration between hotel sales and marketing teams. Discuss results, budgets and target follow-up, while also addressing upcoming periods of low occupancy in advance. The marketing team must be aware of periods when MICE segment performance is below forecasts and budgets. This is where planning and communication between teams can make a major difference. Sales and marketing leaders must work closely with the Revenue Manager to identify periods of weakness as far in advance as possible and launch promotional campaigns to increase the flow of leads and bookings for those periods.