How to create a high-performance Commercial Team in your hotel

Companies like Apple, Netflix, and Google are 40 % more productive than the average company according to research from the consulting firm Bain & Company. High productivity means 30 % - 50 % higher profit margins than industry averages. Some, if not all, of their ideas, can be applied to the hotel industry. Three components of human capital impact productivity more than anything else: Time, talent, and energy.

Most companies spread their talents across all roles in the company. The most successful companies identify business-critical roles and fill these roles with A-level quality employees. These talents will manage the most important parts of the business for success. If every team member is a star player, productivity is extremely high.

The average company loses more than 25 % of its productive power to processes that waste time and prevent people from getting things done. This not only decreases employees’ output, but it also raises costs and demoralizes people, reducing the energy and enthusiasm they bring to their work.

An engaged employee is over 40 % more productive than a satisfied employee. An inspired employee is 125 % more productive than a satisfied employee. Companies that inspire more employees perform better. Companies that invest in developing inspirational leadership create a meaningful impact on productivity.

How could these insights be used to increase productivity in commercial work in hotels?

Manage time

The commercial team fills their days with unproductive phone calls, emails, meetings, and many other things that add little value. Hotels can realize significant time savings by investing their time as carefully as they invest their money. Here are a few ideas:

• Clarify and setting priorities. The commercial work in hotels is a never ending story. Therefore you need to work on the most important things first.
• Automate everything that can be automated. Time is a scarce resource and your valuable time should be spent on qualified work instead of meaningless routines.
• Teamwork reduces the need for meetings to update everyone. Use a commercial system for collaboration and reduce time spent on email and other forms of time-consuming communication.

Manage talents

People make a difference in hospitality. The most successful hotels attract, retain, and deploy their people in ways that maximize output. Leaders can boost the impact of their talents by:

• Identifying the roles where talents can make the most impact. A talented commercial manager would bring in more business to a hotel than any other role.
• Clarify the expectations in terms of jobs, goals, and collaboration. An updated and modernized version of a job description is a good starting point.
• Provide top-level support but not micromanagement. Leaders must realize that top talents need the freedom to create superior solutions to reach peak performance.

Manage motivation

Research shows that the biggest breakthroughs in organizational energy happen when employees feel not just engaged but inspired by their roles and organizations. Here are some ideas how to inspire employees and build a winning culture:

• Build a people-centric and empowering culture where team members can link their own roles and missions to their organizations’ vision and goals.
• Balance employee autonomy with company needs to maximize engagement, efficiency, and performance.
• Leaders need to raise the strategic ambition by creating bold ambitions and compelling visions to inspire their teams.

Demand Calendar benefits include

Effective time management

Data from many different sources is automatically collected and transferred to Demand Calendar. All information is accessible in one system which saves valuable time for all roles in the commercial team.

Demand Calendar always visualize or list the most important things first so each role can focus on their priorities. Demand Calendar will automatically send alerts when something needs attention to help people stay on track.

Many emails can be eliminated since Demand Calendar has a built in messaging/task function for efficient communication within the right context. Using the same data will not only save time, but also free creativity to find better solutions for increasing revenue.

Making talents thrive

Demand Calendar has deep functionality for each role in the commercial team. Each team member has the best tool to get their job done faster and more accurately. Top management can provide active support since they can easily follow the progress for the commercial team in Demand Calendar where information is transparent and always available. Each user can keep track of their own targets as well as the overall goals for the hotel.

Increase motivation

Manage people and increasing engagement for the hotel’s vision and long-term goals are jobs for leaders and cannot (yet) be replaced by systems or robots. Demand Calendar cannot replace a great leader, but a well funtioning system can decrease the risk for de-motivation when too much of the job has to be done manually and when systems are not working as expected. Leaders that provide the right tools for their employees will have one less problem to handle and have a better possibility of managing motivation.