The primary technology component in group sales at hotels
has been a Sales & Catering system. While these systems served sales teams
well in the past, these are just sales tracking systems and it’s time to demand
a lot more from technology we use for group business. Following are a few.
Profitability Integrated in Sales Workflow
Group Systems must integrate profit into each step of the
group sales process. It should integrate profitability into your lead pipeline
and surface best leads, into the pricing process, and into contract and
negotiation phases. And it should do all this automatically without any manual
intervention at every stage so your speed to market is not impacted.
Holistic View of the Business
While groups use services of various departments, profitability
shouldn’t be segmented and must be presented in a holistic manner with all
aspects of the business across department boundaries. This will enable sales
teams and management to make intelligent decisions like increasing pricing of one
component to cover profit degradation in another.
Enable Consistent Control
Technology should allow built-in management control into the
sales process as well. Systems must allow management to control the group sales
process without producing overload by surfacing sales that are outside of set
parameters or business that is not meeting specific goals.
Help Upsell and Cross Sell
Technology should help hotels generate more revenue from group attendees with targeted offers. Systems should have functionality that support up-sell of rooms or cross sell of services like a bar or spa.
Facilitate Continuous Improvement
Technology can aid continuous improvement by surfacing the
right analytics about sales, revenue, profit and your customer behavior. Hotels
can continuously tweak their sales & revenue strategy based on outcomes
that are available immediately instead of taking days and weeks to prepare reports quarterly
or annually.
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