HSMAI Curacao

10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Swissôtel Chicago | Chicago, IL

If you or your staff members are planning to attend Affordable Meetings® Mid-America in Chicago – or are looking for an outstanding educational program targeted specifically to hotel sales and marketing staff – you’ll want to give strong consideration to attending this conference. Top-notch speakers and a collection of impressive sessions make this a must-attend program, and a great way to maximize your time while in Chicago.

Designed specifically for hotel sales professionals, HSMAI’s 2009 Hotel Sales Strategy Conference is a can’t-miss conference that will help you  Find New Business, Stand Out from the Crowd &
Navigate the Road to Recovery.  Industry thought leaders will address essential issues including:
 Optimizing sales deployment, utilizing market share results to drive sales strategy, and learning how to choose between competing sales initiatives
 Improving budgeting accuracy and your competitive sales advantage through an innovative  town hall session with Smith Travel Research  
 Driving online reservations through Internet marketing, whether you’re part of a major brand or an independent property

You’ll also hear directly from customers who will share their strategic thoughts on developments in each of their sectors; learn how to utilize personal branding to make you and your sales team indispensable to your company and clients; and participate in an executive leadership module presented by Henry Givray, chairman and CEO of SmithBucklin Corporation. 
 
The full conference agenda and session overviews can be found at www.hdosm.org, along with information regarding registration and conference sponsorship.

Companies who exhibit at HSMAI’s Affordable Meetings® will receive a special registration rate for the 2009 Hotel Sales Strategy Conference: 25% off of the early member registration rate, a discounted rate of $295 per person.  For non-exhibitors, early registration (through 3/18/09) for the conference is $395 for HSMAI members and $570 for non-members, which includes one year of membership.  All conference registrants will also receive the results of a new survey of best practices for providing added value to customers in order to maintain rates, as well as a complimentary registration to any HSMAI University webinar held in the second quarter of 2009.  For more information, contact HSMAI vice president Juli Jones at jjones@hsmai.org or at (703) 506-3280.

Make the most of your travel time to Affordable Meetings® Mid-America and come in a day early for this impressive program.  Both events are indispensable parts of your future strategic planning.  For information about exhibiting opportunities at Affordable Meetings®, visit www.affordablemeetings.com.

HSMAI’s Hotel Sales Strategy Conference is organized by HSMAI and HSMAI’s Hotel Director of Sales & Marketing Special Interest Group (HDOSM-SIG) Advisory Board.  Full details at www.hdosm.org.

Colorado Springs: HSMAI Curaçao Chapter board represented by Director Steven Damiana and President Tamira La Cruz were awarded with the best Small Chapter in the category of websites as well as the category of partnerships. Leaders all over the world were able to echo the name of Curacao receiving these awards during the Annual HSMAI International Leadership conference March 25-2,2008 entitled “ Reaching higher grounds: Exploring new heights” that saw over 170 leaders from all over the US as well as Caribbean, Central America and South Asia Pacific.

More than 170 top industry leaders of the 25 different chapters present were able to accept the different awards in the categories which were all judged by other international chapters. Besides the 2 awards, Curacao won also the special honored prize of chapter with the highest rate of retention in the whole of HSMAI International chapters all over the world. The chapter of the year resulted to be the HSMAI Mid South Chapter ( cities such as Memphis, etc.)  (more…)

Source: allbusiness.com
By Keith Rosen

 I’m blessed; and on many levels. One being, I am truly in love with what I do as an executive sales coach. If I could have any job in the word (other than being a rock star but I’m digressing to the dreams of a child) I would still excitedly and passionately choose being an executive sales coach and consultant. One of the things I love most about what I do is the creative aspect of my work. That is, the creativity that comes into play when working with clients.

Whether we are creating new processes, powerful questions to better qualify and enroll your prospects, new templates, new ways of doing things, collaborating on ideas, co-creating new solutions and innovations to develop and maintain their competitive edge, the creativity in the coaching process is a non-negotiable essential component that drives the value each client receives during every coaching session.

The same holds true when selling. After all, selling is the art of creating new possibilities. The creation of new possibilities; possibilities and solutions that weren’t there before or ones that your clients couldn’t see. That’s what it’s all about, especially when you are working with your clients and prospects. (more…)

Source: Hotelmarketing.com

IT isn’t easy to astonish Kathleen Ameche, who is usually on the road five days a week as a speaker, and who literally wrote the book on women and business travel.

But the result of a recent Web seminar on travel safety that she helped organize among 500 female business travelers did just that.

“Ninety-eight percent of them said they had their personal safety compromised on a business trip within the last 45 days,” said Ms. Ameche, the author of “The Woman Road Warrior: A Woman’s Guide to Business Travel” (Agate, 2005). “Ninety-eight percent! That number is staggering. In 2007 we still have that issue?”

It has been noted, here and elsewhere, that the growing number of female business travelers has had significant effects on the travel experience. Women are a big part of the reason that a typical hotel room, whether midlevel or luxury, has better bedding, lighting, room service, closets, work spaces and overall design.

Unlike men, women tend to notice the details and share them with friends and colleagues. So hotels are going to be hearing more about safety. (more…)

Source: hotelmarketing.com

NEARLY every morning, over his second cup of coffee, Tom Brady, general manager at the Affinia Chicago, logs onto his computer and surfs over to TripAdvisor.com to see if there are any new postings about his hotel.

“It’s an obsession,” he said. If the review is positive he moves on. If it’s unfavorable — like the complaint posted in March from a guest who had received a $90 parking ticket because of a valet’s error — he’s on it immediately. In that case, he marched straight out to the valet to find out what had happened. After identifying the guest, he made sure that the company issued an apology and a reimbursement for the ticket.

“This is all over the world,” he said, describing his concern about any negative comment on TripAdvisor. “Everyone is looking at this. I’ve got to make sure it’s solved quickly, so God forbid someone else doesn’t have the same problem.” (more…)

Source: www.hsmai.org

LAS VEGAS — “Travelers get the control they want to buy exactly what they value,” according to Henry Harteveldt of Forrester Research, who delivered the keynote address at the Travel Industry Association’s TravelCom Res-Expo conference and trade show in

In the future, will your computer plan the perfect trip? 

By Rob Lovitt, Travel writer MSNBC contributor

Way back in the Dark Ages (circa 1999), the folks at HotBot ran a very clever ad campaign likening Internet search to a room full of befuddled old men. Regardless of the query at hand, they’d pop up with the most ridiculous results, including, in one memorable case, a bow-tied geezer with a whip who would beckon: “Enter my dungeon of delight.”

“Why is he here?” asks a cohort, to which another replies in exasperation, “He comes up for everything.”

If you’ve ever researched a vacation online, you probably know the feeling. From choosing a destination to finding good deals, the typical search can lead to some wildly inappropriate results. A few weeks ago, I started asking various analysts and entrepreneurs what the explosion of online travel resources means for the rest of us. Can airfares be predicted? Are user reviews trustworthy? And, perhaps most important, is there any way to take the ever-expanding trove of travel-related data and make it less of a catalog and more of a guide? (more…)

Source: HSMAI.org- By Brenda Fields

For hotel staff working on Christmas morning, either behind the front desk or in the housekeeping department, a rooms sales position may look like a pretty cushy job! Sales people usually don’t have to work holidays or weekends and seem to have the freedom to come and go as they please. But, in reality, a sales position bears it own challenge and responsibilities to the property.

Sales has the primary responsibility to generate room revenues for the property i.e. building occupancy in low demand periods and increasing average rates in peak times. But, in order to do this successfully, it is important that a sales person is at the top of his/her game.
An effective sales person should be able to produce results despite market conditions and product drawbacks and to develop existing business by taking one meeting and turning it into four.

It is also important to understand that “sales” is a skill, not a personality trait. Expert sales skills can produce business despite product deficiencies, rate structure, or market conditions. Since most owners and operators do not have perfect properties and supply/demand dynamics can change, it is even more critical to ensure that each sales person is highly skilled to generate business and to deal with client objections and problems effectively.
A dedication to expert sales skills, thru a formal training program, is the best insurance for market share and profitability.
Although formal sales training is necessary, it is not the entire solution to ensure that each sales person is effective. This article will address some important “habits” that are demonstrated by the most effective sales people, to assist owners and managers in developing a highly effective sales department. (more…)