Manager, Commercial Performance, Holiday Inn Express

Role Purpose

Provide hands-on sales, marketing, and channel strategy consultation to owners, management companies, hotel Director of Sales, and General Managers for all IHG brands in franchised hotels when deployed by Franchise Performance Support (FPS) or as the need is identified by Operations Analytics & Insight or other groups at IHG. Develop strategic action plans for hotels to drive measurable, incremental sales revenue. Work with individual hotel teams to identify skill development areas and properly deploy sales and marketing resources. Provide guidance on the appropriate segmentation mix to maximize revenue potential. Identify areas of opportunity in performance and recommend tools and sales training to optimize performance of sales team. Assist in identifying target account and potential for each hotel.

Key Accountabilities

• Collaborate with FPS to guarantee a unified and seamless process to hotels and clients. Partner with Franchise Revenue team on sales and revenue strategy.
• Develop relationships with key counterparts in category 1 management companies.
• Diagnose root cause of issues at hotel(s), prioritize information and create specific action plans based on data analyses to deliver incremental revenue and improve market share.
• Analyze and interpret market research data, identify gaps in performance to determine hotel (s) strengths and weakness relative to its competitors.
• Based on hotel assessment determine appropriate consultation with key stakeholders, management companies, and/or hotels (including GM and Director of Sales), either over the phone or through an in person visit.
• Develop tactical and strategic sales and marketing plans with the hotel, owner, and/or management company designed to maximize hotel revenues from local, regional, and national markets, to drive hotel-level sales performance, and market share position.
• Identify potential clients and assist the local sales team in developing account penetration plan.
• Review IHG training and tools to improve IHG sales processes that drive performance, improve sales and marketing efficiency and build a stronger sales culture.
• Consult with the local sales team on best practices, IHG sales tools, and brand information to enhance the sales process and penetrate specific market segments and key accounts.
• Assess current channel strategy and consult with hotels on necessary actions to drive revenue through channel optimization.
• Advise on future channel strategy to maximize conversion (e.g., web content, photos, channel-based pricing packages)
• Communicate with FPS and other key internal stakeholders regarding next steps for hotel, owner, and/or management company to execute action plan.

Key Skills & Experiences

Education –

Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree in Hotel Management, Business, or a relevant field of work is preferred. Alternatively, an equivalent combination of education and work-related experience in hotel operations.

Experience –

8+ years progressive work-related experience, with at least 5 years in hotel operations management or relevant sales and marketing which includes the development of the development and execution of tactical sales programs (business plans) and regional or multi-hotel corporate experience a plus.

Technical skills and Knowledge –

• Demonstrated ability to adapt consultation based on the complexity of the hotel, from limited service to full service and extended-stay products
• Ability to quickly build trusted relationships with owners, hotels, and internal IHG stakeholders in a limited amount of time.
• Demonstrated knowledge of marketing and sales principles, including channel strategy.
• Demonstrated ability to interpret hotel performance data, and diagnose root causes of issues and develop action plans tailored to individual hotel/account needs that drive incremental revenue and market share.
• Demonstrated ability to understand competition in a market and identify gaps in hotel’s performance to competitors and execute a strategy to drive performance.
• Demonstrated understanding of hotel’s business mix and the ability to develop segmentation strategies and plans.
• Demonstrated understanding of daily/weekly/monthly/seasonal demands, booking patterns and pricing.
• Ability to identify demand generators.
• Demonstrated ability to advise and assist in development of business travel strategy and execution of the RFP process to improve revenue performance.
• Demonstrated knowledge and ability to interpret data from resources and systems that provide insight on business travel accounts and travel agencies at top producing hotels in market.
• Demonstrated experience in working with hotels individually to develop account plans to increase share of business.