In this episode of our Strategy and Leadership Podcast, we were joined by Jeong Pyon who is the Senior Manager of Group Strategy for an international hotel chain in Vancouver. Hotel strategy is intertwined with revenue management, with the primary goal focusing on booking rooms to the right market segment. To best achieve this, group strategy managers must understand at both transient and group demands and how to plan strategically around these segments.
Throughout this episode, Jeong shared his best practices for leading strategy in an environment of constant change, including:
- Knowing how often you should review your strategy: Some organizations review their strategies yearly, and others do so quarterly. Hotels often have weekly or monthly stakeholder and management strategy meetings, because external factors can have a strong and swift impact on bookings and revenue.
- Understand what you are really selling: For example, Jeong’s professor in Switzerland explained to the class that they’re not selling hotel rooms; they’re selling time. Shifting the way you look at your product or service can help you strategize the best ways to position it to your market segments.
- A culture of communication is crucial: Communication between leadership teams, stakeholders and employees is very important, especially for global organizations like international hotel chains. This ensures that everyone understands the plan for the future, and can make decisions that support it.
- Technology can enable achievement when used properly: Data can influence important decisions and it’s often best to focus on the last year, the present and the future.
