What is a goal?
A goal is a desire for something in the future. The goal clarifies what you want to achieve some time in the future. If you do not have any dreams or wishes to create your future, there is no need to set goals. Instead, make the best of your day, sell as much as possible, and fill the rooms with guests. Every day will be the same, and you will go with the flow, especially in a downturn where a lack of strategy and goals will hurt the hotel harder. However, dreams will make a difference in where you could be in the future. Companies like Google that work with the goal-setting method OKRs are hugely successful.
Goals for hotel sales teams
Hotels want to become financially successful long-term. Revenue is key to making a sustainable profit over time. Therefore, all revenue-generating activities are essential for hotels to succeed, which motivates hotels to have roles in marketing, sales, and revenue management.
Align the team
Traditionally, marketing, sales, and revenue management have been working in silos to generate revenue, often with conflicting goals and reporting directly to the general manager. Unfortunately, conflicting goals within any organization are probably more harmful than not having any goals.
Hotels want to increase or maintain the total revenue, so a goal based on total revenue will align the commercial team. The plan can be to reach a specific level of total revenue or increase total revenue in percent. All other goals should point in the direction of increasing total revenue.
Supporting goals
Every team member, such as marketing, sales, and revenue management, should have goals that support increasing total revenue. There are only two ways of increasing revenue in a hotel. The first is to attract more guests (B2C) and customers (B2B). The second is to sell more to every guest and customer. To reach a higher total revenue, hotels need to set goals for the number of guests and customers and the average spend per guest and customer.
Refined goals
Keep goals simple and focus on the activities to reach the goals. When a hotel reaches the maximum total revenue (based on the market and capacity), there is a need for goals that focus on maximizing the contribution to profit. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) will be more important to refine the financial success of a hotel.
Example of goals
Overall goal:
Increase total revenue by 10 % by 2023 compared to 2019.
Supporting goals:
- Increase the number of guests by 5 %
- Increase the number of customers by 8 %
- Increase the average spend per guest by 15 %
- Increase the average contract value per customer by 5 %
Refined goals:
- Decrease CAC to 18 % of total revenue
- Increase CLV by 5 %
