Hotel company team meetings are especially critical this year as we are emerging from the recession into a fragile recovery. Q2 demand increased by an historic percentage of 8.7% according to STR. Bobby Bowers, senior VP at STR, states that “We’re forecasting full-year 2010 RevPAR growth of just over 5 percent, driven almost exclusively by occupancy gains.” (HotelNewsNow, July 21, 2010).

So what does this have to do with team meetings? The entire team, operations, sales and Revenue Management, is transitioning from lean and mean to ramping up their efforts in the face of increasing demand without sacrificing the efficiencies that they attained in the past two years.

How do company team meetings support this transition?

• Building and supporting company culture. Every company has a culture either it is articulated or not. It is transmitted via expectations communicated by internal communications, phone conversations and every way that the corporate office ‘touches’ the units in the field. This is the time to say ‘thank you’ and to build consensus for strategies moving forward.
  
  
• Motivation and training. The corporate team can be motivating and train their teams but it is heard louder and given validation by the program of the meeting. Whether it is a motivational or training based program or both, it says to the team that they are valued enough to be given these opportunities to learn – to get ‘stoked’ about the year to come.
  
  
• General Mangers and Operations. GMs are the ‘meat in the sandwich’ – they get their messages from the corporate office and then have to transmit it to the team. If anyone deserves a ‘shot’ of motivation it is the GM who has struggled with budgets, cutting hours and downsizing if necessary without sacrificing service levels.
  
  
• Sales and RMs. The revenue generating departments were especially beaten down by the tough conditions in which they had to generate revenue. Revenue managers were the meat in the in the ‘cut the rates but get revenue up’ sandwich. Sales suffered battle fatigue from making endless contacts and getting little return on their time and efforts. Then when a client did book it was how long the booking would ‘stick’ before it was cancelled or postponed.

The budget was so severely cut last year, it is time to invest in the team to maximize opportunities in the recovery. These are the people that went to work every day to make it happen in spite of tough market conditions.

Is this white paper self serving –maybe a little. However, I have seen the effects on teams of company meetings. They emerge with renewed attitudes and appreciation for the investment that their companies have made in them. Budgets are tight and team meetings are expensive but consider the ROI of a motivated and loyal team in the coming year – priceless!

Ask us about the motivating GMs – The Power of the Position program. Then check out the recommendation on my profile on LinkedIn for the Power Selling program. Social Media as a Sales Tool gives sales and RMs new ways of using social media for all profit centers. Contact us at carol@carolverret.com for more info.