The lines continue to blur between commercial disciplines in hospitality, but most organizations struggle with how to adapt to this new environment. Silos still exist between departments for many reasons:
- legacy staffing models,
- strained resources,
- inflexible technology,
- insufficient talent development, and
- lack of agreement upon the measure that will define their success.
For hotel companies looking to create organizational structures centered on an overarching commercial strategy, identifying those measures of success – beyond profitability – can be a place to start.
While metrics are not a strategy, they are essential for setting and monitoring objectives and are a key component of a strong and effective strategy.
HSMAI’s Sales, Marketing, and Revenue Optimization Advisory Boards have been talking a lot about KPIs — Key Performance Indicators — all while the question “What is success?” continues to elude their disciplines in practice throughout the industry.
One such conversation was at a breakout session at the 2022 HSMAI ROC in Orlando. Ninety percent of the revenue leaders in attendance declared that RevPAR is not the leading indicator which they consider to measure success. However, there was little consensus about what could/should take its place.
HSMAI’s KPI workgroup — composed of industry thought-leaders across the commercial disciplines — has concluded that today’s successful leaders focus on total revenue and its relation to profit. This suggests that our ‘headline KPI’ should be TrevPAR or GOPPAR versus RevPAR.
As one committee member summarized the dilemma, “If you are going to live behind the idea of optimizing total revenue, then RevPAR itself does not serve the commercial leader and with profit being the ultimate outcome, RevPAR cannot be the endgame.”
So what is a commercial leader to do?
HSMAI’s cross-discipline KPI workgroup created the resources included in this special report to assist you as you develop and align your commercial strategies, distinguishing who should use what measures and when.
In this special report you’ll find the KPIs glossary and index:
- The 60+ KPIs are broken down into digestible units by assigning disciplines and personas to create increased relevance for all stakeholders, including Commercial Leaders, Directors of Finance, Owners, and General Managers.
- The glossary and index are available for HSMAI members to access in an AirTable format, allowing you and your organization to process the KPIs meaningfully and set expectations by discipline. Get your interactive copy at: https://airtable.com/shrSUrTBdK0WcYTMS.
As HSMAI’s cross-discipline work focused on commercial strategy continues in 2023, we look forward to going beyond the KPIs themselves and creating models that can be utilized to identify your organization’s maturity in commercial strategy.
In the meantime, we encourage you to skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.
You can download the KPI Index here.
HSMAI’s 2022 KPI Workgroup
- Co-Chairs
- Amy Infante, CEO & Visionary, GitGo
- Lori Kiel, CHDM, Chief Commercial Officer, Kessler Collection
- Richard Black, VP of Sales, Sojern
- Denise Chapman, Director of Marketing, Hotel Del Coronado
- Steven Gottlieb, Senior Vice President Sales & Revenue Management, Graduate Hotels
- Matthew Guglielmetti, Decision Analytics Manager, ZS
- James Harris, CRME, VP Business Development, Revenue Analytics
- John Jimenez, CHDM, VP of E-commerce, Noble Investment Group
- Jonathan Kaplan, Vice President, Americas Sales, IHG Hotels & Resorts
- Monika Morrobel, CRME, CHDM, Senior Corporate Director of Commercial Strategy, Kessler Collection
- Jill Moulton, Sr Director Revenue Policy & Planning, Marriott International
- David Warman, Chief Client Officer, IDeaS Revenue Solutions
