With costs rising and flow more difficult to achieve, sales teams must exceed revenue expectations for hotels and/or ownership to achieve acceptable profit levels. The HSMAI Sales Advisory Board got together to discuss how to meet those revenue expectations.

Five ways to adjust your mix of business in 2023

  1. Shift to retail.
  2. Group up.
  3. Mix the discount business differently such as AAA and advance purchase.
  4. Continuously analyze the business including running P&L for groups to make sure they are profitable.
  5. Look for ways to capture direct channel business because it’s more profitable.

Five ideas to manage group inventory differently

  1. Increase the frequency of benchmarking the market to see what concessions and group rates competitors are giving.
  2. Capitalize on the opportunities for higher rate of business in the shorter term, rather than relying on pace reports as we have in the past.
  3. Learn the art of walking business – move groups to another hotel if another piece of group business comes in that is a better pattern, has more F&B and a higher priced ADR.
  4. Move groups within property as needed and get ingenious about space.
  5. Change the convention service manager position to remote so that they can manage several hotels.

Five tips to grow budget/revenue

  1. Stay agile, look at lead times and the business that’s out there.
  2. If one segment, such as retail, is at a peak, look at other segments like groups to make-up revenue.
  3. Provide the sales teams with the right tools on how to educate the client to close business.
  4. Look to mid-size hotels that have been good for smaller meetings.
  5. Review your processes and ask, “Is how we have to do this? Is there a technology that now exists that will make people more efficient?”q

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