Strategies to overcome conflicting goals

While these roles are critical to a hotel's success, each function's goals can often conflict, creating tension within the commercial team. In addition, in commercial roles such as marketing, sales, and revenue management, bonus programs are often tied to specific metrics and goals that can create conflicts within the organization. For example, marketing may be incentivized to focus on brand awareness metrics rather than long-term goals, sales may prioritize short-term revenue generation over the long-term health of the hotel, and revenue management may overprice services to maximize revenue, leading to guest dissatisfaction and a loss of repeat business. As a result, these conflicting goals and bonus programs can undermine the hotel's overall success, leading to a fragmented and disjointed approach to business growth.

Hotels can implement these four strategies to overcome potential conflicts and create a more cohesive and successful bonus program that delivers value to guests and other stakeholders.

One of the most effective ways to overcome conflicts in commercial roles is to encourage communication and collaboration between departments. Regular meetings, cross-functional projects, and shared goals and metrics can help promote a more unified approach to business growth. It's also essential to ensure that each department's goals are aligned with the overall hotel strategy so that everyone is working towards the same objectives.

Bonus programs should be designed to incentivize individual and team performance and include short-term and long-term goals. They should also be regularly reviewed and adjusted to ensure they are promoting the right behaviors and achieving the desired outcomes.

Promoting a customer-centric culture within the hotel is important, emphasizing the importance of brand loyalty and reputation. This can help ensure that short-term goals are aligned with long-term objectives, such as driving repeat business and maximizing long-term revenue growth.

It's essential to regularly assess the impact of bonus programs on guest satisfaction, revenue, and profitability metrics. This can help identify any unintended consequences of bonus programs and allow for adjusting goals and metrics as necessary.

 

By implementing these four strategies, hotels can overcome conflicts in commercial roles and promote a more cohesive and successful operation. This will lead to a better guest experience, higher revenue growth, and excellent long-term financial health for the hotel.