Sales Mktg for Hospitality

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Sales, marketing, and communications strategies are key to building brand perception and awareness, distinguishing a value proposition from competitors, and growing and retaining customers. Paralleling the hospitality industry’s evolving globalization, organizations have moved from a local to a global approach. Once largely sales-driven, hospitality has become a market-driven industry, where increasingly complex channels are required to target, reach, and convert diverse prospective audiences. Today, an integrated multi-channel marketing and communications strategy is the norm, authentic content and storytelling are king, and this mastery-level course explores why. Creative and successful sales & marketing case studies are central in this foundational course, in which students learn the principles of marketing management at both the property and corporate level. Projects focus on the positioning and development of effective sales & marketing and communications plans, and the collection, tracking and analysis of data, metrics, and key performance indicators to drive strategy. Particular emphasis is given to a variety of target customer segments including business and leisure travelers, travel agencies, meeting planners, and broader groups from baby boomers to millennials and beyond. Students will learn marketing methodologies across multiple media channels including traditional (print, direct mail, radio, outdoor, TV, etc.) and digital (email, display, search, social media, etc.,). Sample topics include: customer loyalty programs, guest response action plans, ethical and privacy issues, liability and risk, as well as creative models for design and visualization. Other topics include the changing value of ratings & review systems across the world with influencer sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp, etc., and events and destination marketing.