What skills should hotels look for when recruiting Revenue Managers?

“Hotels should look for leaders that show the best balance between hard and soft skills. Technical skills are important, i.e., the more diverse systems the candidate has worked with, the better. I find it is also very valuable for hotels to look for candidates that are naturally curious about systems. Those frequently learn the ins and outs of a system quickly, and with the least instruction, so, arguably a super-powered capability. It’s not just about the tool, but the holistic and confident knowledge of the tool made possible by a genuine willingness to learn the “why” behind it.

Nevertheless, the bigger challenge lies in soft skills. It is just as important (and hopefully more owners and General Managers are recognizing this) that your Revenue Management leader has sales, communication, and creativity skills. Sales and communication skills have been vastly discussed and explained by experts as top skills needed in business leaders, and with revenue management, it is the same. Creativity, on the other hand, is a key skill. Yes, there is space for creativity in RM. Hotels should hire leaders that can demonstrate they have regularly brought ideas and solutions (even if not at all implemented) to the table.

It is important for RM professionals to often step away from the numbers to foster a growth mindset, enabling ways for creativity in strategy. Hotels also need to create an environment for revenue managers where they can express their ideas even if they are unconventional or not at all related to their areas. Mistakes cannot be a reason for punishment in that environment; there needs to be acceptance of different disciplines, strategies, and ideas used. Finally, leaders should match the chosen ideas with the original proposition to hopefully generate solutions, which is not always the end goal in this case.”

“Basic Skills:

• Technical skills: This is the most basic requirement and the candidate should have a good understanding of how the systems and tools work (e.g., PMS, Booking Engine, etc.) as well as partner extranets, distribution channels, channel management, Revenue Management software and any other tools for analytics and reporting.
• It is also important to understand how packages work. Different hotels have different setups; i.e., the creation of rate codes, promos codes and package codes) but it’s important to understand all the components that go towards creating packages and offers.
• Analytical skills are a must in revenue management; not only analysing and understanding your past data/ future trends but also taking the right decisions in terms of selling, yielding and amending offerings.

Personality / Character:

• I would say that it goes beyond just being good at numbers & analytics. In Revenue Management, you are a “connector” – you work closely with sales, marketing, reservations and other departments! Therefore, it is crucial to have someone who understands the dynamics of different departments (also from a Total Revenue Vs. only Room Revenue optimization perspective).
• It’s also important to have someone who understands that operations (packages you create in Revenue / Reservations) are directly linked to other departments, e.g., F&B, Wellness, other activities, transportation, external activities, etc.
• The person should also understand economic and political insights that help with forecasting and especially budgeting, e.g., elections, currency fluctuations, inflation rates etc. A person who is on top of what is happening in the destination (trends, customer behaviour, competition, events etc.) and has a competitive mindset is important. Being a proactive team player is also a must!
• Resilient & Tenacious – Someone who does not give up easily; someone who finds solutions when faced with obstacles. There are many challenging moments, e.g., a decline in Revenue has to be answered by Revenue Leadership.
• Competitive nature – someone who enjoys competition and is always ready to try new things, explore new options and take risks; someone who can motivating teams (e.g., sales, reservations) to be competitive as well as exceed targets.
• Good communication skills and the ability to negotiate/persuade: It is important to be able to present and support your actions and forecast to GMs, Corporate Offices and Owners where applicable. Communicating with sales/ marketing, reservations teams and the operations team is also crucial. Someone who can say “No” to sales and GMs when needed is also important.
• Relationship Management: Someone who can maintain a good relationship & communication with both internal and external stakeholders.

To recap, you would look for someone who has all the technical and analytical skills required for Revenue Management but I believe it is also important to have someone who maintains relationships with both internal and external stakeholders and who is on top of what is happening around them.”

“Historically, revenue managers have been their own worst enemies when it comes to selling themselves and the value they provide. By creating the aura that they are the smartest person in the room, it allows others to marginalise them. To counteract this, I would suggest top revenue leadership needs the following skills:

• The ability to embrace change. If nothing else, this pandemic has taught us that change is inevitable. A revenue leader who demonstrates that they are constantly looking for opportunities to refine the way they’re doing things across the hotel will stand out from the crowd.
• Using data to inspire others AND drive customer-centric decisions. Revenue “geeks” love playing with data. Revenue “geeks who speak” look to use data to convince others that their decisions and strategies follow the right approach. But a revenue leader who can do this and demonstrates that their strategy has the customer at the centre of it will be most successful. This could be as simple as truly understanding a customer’s nervousness about returning to travel and designing rate products with the most appropriate fences, to being at the centre of a segment strategy to encourage new markets to use the hotel.
• Daring to try something different. A revenue leader who can demonstrate a broad understanding of all the commercial levers, not just revenue management, and the bravery to put the planning to place and see it through, even if it fails, demonstrates a creativity that will be sorely needed in the future.”

“Revenue Management is an analytical role within the company, yet so many times it is mistaken as a ‘step up’ from Reservations. Knowledge of Reservations is needed, but the role of reservations is more sales orientated. The most common traits a Revenue Manager should have are to be analytical, systems savvy and both data and results-driven. But 4 skills that make a revenue manager excellent are:

• Business Minded. A strong revenue manager needs to be able to make decisions for the business as if it is their own business. Decisions cannot be a blanket, everything-fits-all approach. Profitability should always be considered in every scenario. Consider the different decisions being made, just between pre-COVID where we had to drive profit Vs in COVID where we must drive cash flow.
• Strategist. A great revenue manager needs to think strategically and be able to plan – whether it’s in a scenario of system implementations, pricing in distressed demand (and the impact on your long-term revenue), or in a situation where you need to implement to optimise revenue but that must unfold over a period.
• Good Communicator. In many cases revenue managers are not very social, but nonetheless, they must be good communicators. Someone that can articulate a strategy both at the executive level, as well as with the employees. The revenue manager does not only have to engage stakeholders with their vision, but they also need to cultivate a revenue culture in the organisation.
• Problem Solver. Revenue Managers needs to solve problems. In many scenarios, revenue management is caught between the clients’ needs and/or sales and what the data shows. Revenue Managers must be able to solve the problem by thinking outside the box / the norm, to find a win/win solution. This is particularly important in a time where we all need to be guest-centric in our approach to gain demand.”

“Aside from the expected analytical hard skills, a Revenue Manager also requires a good technical understanding to comprehend the capabilities of reservations, revenue management, BI software & applications and how to make the data travel amongst those. This will help them to work more efficiently and spend less time on administration.

Often, we see the importance of interpersonal skills is underestimated for Revenue Managers in leadership roles. Not only do these skills help the candidate in upward communication but also in dialogues with partners, peers and team members. As Head of Department or in corporate roles with team leaders, the candidate needs to be well organized and be able to prioritize. A strategic mindset is needed to steer the commercial direction based on the analytical facts.”

“The Revenue Manager leader must understand who the guests are and how they behave (Front Office & Reservations experience ), how they are attracted (Sales & Marketing experience), and the reasoning behind the pricing (Yield/Revenue experience). With this acquired knowledge, together with a useful tech stack, the Revenue Manager can lead a positive strategy.

However, in many cases, Revenue Managers have followed a career in Reservations and then Revenue, without real direct contact with guests face-to-face, or any Sales experience. To be able to walk the talk, it’s necessary to have experienced first-hand the challenges that both guests and the market present.”

“Revenue Managers tend to have a more diverse skill set than their name would suggest. The skillset starts with strong analytical abilities that are key to analyzing data to make an informed decision. Besides being analytical, being able to drive commercial awareness across all departments of the hotel is also important.

Revenue Managers must be communicative, develop strong internal and external relationships and be influential, as they lead all the relevant stakeholders to follow the strategy. They must be able to convince management to act based on data. Revenue Managers should be technically savvy, showing strong technical skills with a good understanding of systems configuration, functions and opportunities which often come with adequate utilization of the PMS. For example, each property has a PMS which holds valuable data on guest preferences – if used correctly, this information can present a great upselling opportunity and therefore contribute towards the ADR.”

“I believe there are 10 very important traits of a strong revenue manager:

1. A team player. Collaborative and works effectively as a member of teams.
2. Have strong verbal and visual communication. The ability to articulate revenue strategies and deployment to achieve strategies is key.
3. Technical knowledge and technically savvy. They need to understand, to a detailed degree, how technology can increase the revenue optimization function. Remain open to new technology systems and learn how they operate.
4. Be competitive. Determined and committed with a strong drive to achieve the goals.
5. Be priority and laser-focused. They need to be able to identify and prioritize a focus on the highest revenue or profit-generating needs compared to time-consuming tasks with low-yield impact.
6. Remain agile. Adapt quickly and efficiently according to business changes and needs; thrive in a constantly evolving environment. Creative and doesn’t hesitate to experiment.
7. Have strong leadership skills. Earn trust and directly / indirectly lead teams at all levels throughout the organization.
8. Have strong influencing skills. They need to influence decisions at all levels of the organization and be able to convince others to act based on data and information.
9. Be a critical observer. A good listener with strong observational skills, able to read situations, identify changes needed, understand environments, and respond accordingly.
10. Have strong interpersonal skills. The ability to develop and maintain relationships with colleagues and third-party partners.”

“The role of a Revenue Manager is changing a lot. Technology has taken away the focus from revenue tactics like pricing, forecasting and inventory management, as algorithms and AI now outsmart humans on these elements. Therefore the role of a Revenue Manager becomes more strategic, multi-departmental and with a strong focus on distribution.

Considering all the data that’s available to help revenue managers make strategic decisions, technical and analytical skills should be ranked highly on the job description.”

“The key skills and characteristics for revenue management leadership will be organisational relationship building skills. For an organisation to be successful in their RM implementation, an RM leader must be able to get buy-in from all stakeholders, i.e., Marketing, Sales, Operations and Finance as well as owner management. All stakeholders must have their goals aligned to achieve overall success. With this in mind, it brings us to the next key skill – People and Performance Management.

It is never an individual effort to be successful. The RM leader must be able to manage his/her team, give clear direction and work collaboratively with team members. Adaptability is another key characteristic. With a dynamic marketplace, changes in the workforce and technological advancement mean that a hotel RM leader must be agile, fast, and responsive. In summary, with the emphasis on Total Revenue Management, the leader should have a wide range of hotel business competencies rather than confined to the traditional specific skills of analytics or operations.”

“Maths & analytical skills are key, as well as tech-savviness and a curious mind to continuously explore & understand the complexities of the pricing & distribution landscape. An excel-wizard should also be top of your list, although a good revenue management system may make excel skills dispensable.

The ability to think strategically and to communicate & influence at all levels is vital. You don’t want a one-trick pony who keeps everything to themselves. Working across key departments like Marketing or Sales and understanding the true cost of acquisition will make all the difference between your top & bottom line.”

“Hotels should ask themselves: “What do I need to bring my commercial strategy to the next level?”

When I look back at the past, we have been through different evolutionary stages in the role of the Revenue Manager. In the beginning, it was about knowing how to manage reservations and different systems (technical). The second phase was a more tactical one where the revenue manager was supposed to interpret and analyze data (analytical); Excel played a big role but then came technology. Our third and current phase is about being forward-looking, leveraging technology to enhance our abilities and acting as the strategic leader, connecting all the commercial functions of the hotels towards the same direction for the best revenue and profit return (strategic).

If you are still looking for analytical and excel-savvy revenue managers, you are on the wrong path. Your aim should be to look for a person that can be cross-functional, can communicate and engage with teams, has a long strategic vision, embraces technology, is not afraid of taking bold decisions and can be a pioneer in an ever-evolving market. This is the definition of the Commercial Leader (4th generation of Revenue Manager).”

“Good revenue managers must have a great passion for data, figures, reports, graphs. But this is not enough – they must also understand which figures and data are truly useful in providing information that subsequently translates into effective decisions for the management teams and for achieving targets.

They must demonstrate great curiosity, and always be willing to step up their game and look at everything as though they were seeing it for the first time. They must be creative in certain respects, while at the same time remaining focused on numbers.

This pandemic has shown us how trends and patterns, that we’d previously taken for granted, fell apart overnight (while others suddenly & forcefully emerged), so a readiness for change and a mixture of responsiveness and creativity are crucial to achieving specific goals, both under favourable and unfavourable market conditions.

Furthermore, it’s critical to have an understanding of all hotel operations and departments and work in synergy with the marketing and sales teams to get the most of all revenue centres from a total revenue management perspective. Additionally, it’s crucial to be knowledgeable about profitability parameters and how to optimize costs.

Revenue managers must always accept the fact that the quality and validity of their work is assessed not only based on the activities that they carry out but also (and above all) on the financial results that a company can obtain from said activities.”

“Having asked this in numerous interviews with candidates, all too often people answer with “analytical skills” – and while this is very important (and is one of the most business-critical roles), crucially they must have good communication and team building/relationship skills. Without the skills to bring the team along on the journey, it’s very difficult to drive the business, especially when change is required and this also tends to require a level of assertiveness and tenacity.

Having an inquisitive mind and being able to strategise through creative thinking and problem solving are also key – the role requires you to constantly adapt and change. I don’t think you would find many successful revenue managers who aren’t risk-takers (albeit based on statistical trends). Instead, they constantly explore new options/techniques, they are competitive by nature (who doesn’t like to smash targets?) and they love their technology. As we have more Tech and outstanding RMS, sound maths skills and the ability to manipulate spreadsheets remain important.”

“There are several traits or characteristics one should seek when recruiting for Revenue Management leadership roles. The first and foremost is knowledge of other departments and areas of the hotel such as front office, sales, meetings and events. Being cross-disciplined extends their knowledge far beyond maximizing revenue.

Good analytical skills and business acumen is also required for the position. They must be able to interpret data and trends to formulate a future strategy. They must also be assertive to defend a point of view. RMs are the first ones to identify data trends and patterns. They should be risk-takers – and while risks may sometimes not work out, it’s worth a try. Someone once said, “Status quo won’t change anything”.

Relationship skills with the stakeholders are as important as anything else. Managing upwards, managing people and building relationship can go a long way as RMs spend a good chunk of their time selling rate recommendations to GMs and senior management.”

“When recruiting for Revenue Management, some of the characteristics and skills I would look for are as follows:

• Analytical: The Revenue Manager needs to understand their numbers and should be able to translate them into clear actions. They need to realize this is an ongoing process and analysis should be done repeatedly.
• Persuasive: The Revenue Manager needs to be able to sell their strategy and the concept of revenue management within the organization. Revenue Management does not stop with the revenue manager but should be thought about within the entire company.
• Open Minded: The Revenue Manager needs to have an open mind and should be able to think outside the box. Anything a guest pays for belongs to the revenue process, how can we optimize? And do not stop at revenue, but how about the end result; what is the best mix? Should we always aim for 100% occupancy? Or is it better for your property and your bottom line results to have a different mix?
• Ready for change: If Covid19 has taught us anything, it’s that anything can change at any moment. To be frank, this already happened before Covid19 and is a hazard to any revenue manager who is not on top of their game. The risk of getting stuck in a routine is there if you do not dare yourself and your company to keep checking the numbers and continue looking for different ways of selling.
• Team player & Leading role: The Revenue Manager should be able to determine the goals but should also be able to get the whole team on board, taking other perspectives into account in its decision-making process. What is Revenue without a good sales team to sell to the right clients, a strong (online) marketing presence, and employees in all operational departments of the hotel to interact with the guest?”

“The skills and characteristics that I would look for in a candidate are:

1. Has experience in chain and non-chain; a person from a non-chain being triggered to find solutions creatively.
2. A person with a wide point of view, who can understand the impact of their decision.
3. A person who is excellent in communication, and who is can to deliver their message seamlessly.”

“A combination of analytical skills and people management is crucial. Also, great communication is key in this role as Revenue Managers need to be able to clarify their strategy to all levels. A great Revenue Manager has the ability to activate and motivate all teams to play their part in the revenue strategy and results.”

“I believe that hotels around the world must have a revenue manager who has sales skills and is capable of convincing people. It’s also important that they speak the same language as the sales department; this is a really rare characteristic in a Revenue Manager so focus on that. The rest is intrinsic to the position, almost all revenue managers are good in numbers and excel… but do not necessarily possess sales skills.”

“As with many industries and roles, leadership is a skill that is constantly evolving. Whether you are leading a team of revenue professionals or a team of waiting staff, the leadership traits and skills will be very similar. In both examples, it very much helps if the leaders are respected peers in their fields of expertise. For example, a revenue management leader will usually be someone who has worked in numerous revenue management environments and has led teams of different sizes, backgrounds and skills.

However, it must be said that post-pandemic, recruiters are looking at roles with a new lens. Firstly, because there has been an awakening to the fact that people respond best to leaders who show the human traits of care and empathy. Secondly, due to the unfortunate fact that many have left our beloved hospitality industry, it is OK to look at staff from other sectors, for example, from retail.

In terms of characteristics specific to the function of revenue management, often the analytical, logical and detail-oriented fare well in these roles but with the right leadership many of the revenue management skills can be taught, plus with the advancements in technology, first and foremost those with a passion for the career will succeed the most.”

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