As a consultant for Hotel Revenue Science I’ve had the opportunity to work with many Revenue Managers. I have interacted with RMs working in large brands, franchises and independents. My job has always been to bring them up to a sophisticated level of technical competence so that they have more confidence in decision making. I can attest that most Revenue Managers that I have met are eager to be better at their jobs and, in many cases, they are one of the hardest working team members at their hotel.
Still, some RMs are just a lot better at their jobs than others. What I have learned through the years is that the most successful Revenue Managers routinely do certain things that set them apart from the average RM and these habits have nothing to do with their technical ability or experience.
Here are 7½ non-technical traits that I have found to exist in the best Revenue Managers that I have met.
1. They think like a librarian.
I can’t begin to count how many gigs I’ve had where I dig into the RM department’s folder on the shared drive and I see a mess of folders, file naming formats, and ad-hoc files. The best RMs have a librarian’s approach to the way they organize their files, reports and analysis. They use a nice hierarchy of folders, separate reports by type and year, and keep ad-hoc analysis separated by objective, just to give a few examples. These RMs can easily find anything and they can also direct anyone in their hotel to find exactly what they are looking for. When the owner or GM asks them for a refreshed version of an analysis they did 16 months ago they can easily find it. Organization is indeed a virtue in RM.
2. They think about their internal customers.
The Revenue Manager is typically the source of data insights for top management and other departments. The format in which this data is disseminated can be just as important as the data itself. The best Revenue Managers format their reports to be not only clear, but understood by anyone, not just the intended recipient. They clearly label graphs, add footnotes to large data grids, and even attach anecdotal notes to ad-hoc analysis. Their intention is for the reader of their reports to have a great experience and to truly be able to make decisions from the data provided.
2½. They build for the future.
This habit is very closely related to the one above. When you create a report and save it digitally you are creating an artifact of your company’s intelligence, strategy, and business rules that will potentially be saved forever. The best RMs create models, reports, and analysis that can be understood by anyone today and in the future. It’s easy to build things for today and think about the future as somebody else’s problem. Very few professionals in any function, in any industry, actually think that their work will outlast them, but enduring work does have value. First, if you create workflows and reports that can be learned quickly you are more likely to get promoted and if you become a consultant, the lasting quality of your work will be the source of some great references. Trust me.
