Transient & Leisure Travel Sales Manager

Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago•Chicago, IL

About The Position

The Transient and Leisure Travel Sales Manager is responsible for driving revenue through the promotion and sale of luxury leisure services and packages. This role focuses on cultivating relationships with high-end travel agencies, tour operators, direct customers, and other leisure-related partners. The goal is to increase brand awareness, attract affluent guests, and achieve sales targets by promoting the hotel’s exclusive leisure offerings.

Requirements

Strong analytical skills, with experience in data-driven decision-making and KPI tracking.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with experience in content creation and storytelling.
Words Per Minute typing at 60
Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously in a fast-paced environment.
Leadership and team-building abilities
Return all phone calls on the same day and demonstrate timeliness in getting proposals to client.
Always maintain a professional image in appearance/attire and conduct when dealing with meeting planner and hotel employees.
Basic mathematical skills to complete reports and working knowledge of financial statements and forecasting techniques.
Strong computer skills including Excel, PowerPoint, Word.
Ability to work under pressure and deal with stressful situations during busy periods.
Interpersonal skills to provide overall guest satisfaction.
Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent work experience required.
A minimum 3 year of previous experience in a hotel sales office, preferably in a 4-5 star hotel.

Responsibilities

Responsibly represent the hotel through conducting conferences, making proposals and other external sales presentations to prospective customers to solicit, explain, negotiate and close hotel sales. Utilize discretion and authority to negotiate contracts and commit company with customers and establish agreements with vendors.
Promote awareness to all Virtuoso, Trump Elite, Signature, Ensemble and American Express FH&R agencies via travel to respective regions in the country providing presentations and personal sales calls. Travel and engage in sales activities outside of the hotel to meet with and entertain customers and prospective customers, participate in tradeshows, and industry and community events to promote facilities, to make proposals, maintain contacts, and to close deals.
Conducts quarterly meetings with clients to review room night and revenue production to ensure the hotel is maximizing market share growth. Maintain communication/relationship with other Trump hotels toward achieving pre-determined revenue goal.
Attend weekly sales departmental meeting and other scheduled meetings to support business operations, e.g., tentative review, lost business review, room night-pick up, etc.
Conduct tours of property to travel agents and other potential customers while informing of all hotel services available; entertain customers on property, during site inspections, pre-planning trips, and program operation when appropriate.
Focuses on luxury leisure opportunities from luxury travel agencies.
Partners with Global Account Executives that manage Luxury travel agencies (Signature, Internova,etc.)
Works with Marketing teams on market-level and property-specific strategies and initiatives. Pulls-through existing national and regional promotions with travel agency customers.
Partners with Director of Sales & Marketing to help implement the market’s luxury leisure strategy at key buying locations. Verifies local market strategy is in alignment with the overall account goals.
Gains expertise in hotel amenities (e.g. Spa), ‘new package offerings’ and market promotions; promotes offerings with local buyers.
Develops complete understanding of Trump Hotel’s value proposition to the travel agency market and all associated programs and services.
Partners with), Travel Industry Wholesale to pull through business within launch market and sustain selling solutions at the property level.
Understands competitive market set and economic environment in order to position hotels appropriately during sales process.
Attends appropriate trade shows, travel agency shows, and retail agency events.
Assists with business for other source markets on behalf of travel agency customers, as a value-added service.
Focuses on luxury leisure transient and group opportunities from retail travel agencies.
Manages of all retail, and travel management accounts, including accounts based in source markets that produce sales into the local area.
Works with the Director of Sales & Marketing to establish understanding of sales strategy and effective implementation of this strategy for the hotel in these segments.
Manages and directs the on-property multi-segment sales effort to achieve hotel revenue goals by proactively targeting current and new high value accounts in the market and implementing effective sales deployment strategies to grow market share.
Achieves pre-defined group, retail, premium retail sales goals by actively up-selling each business opportunity to maximize revenue opportunity.
Contracts and closes individual premium retail, retail, groups business resulting from strategic selling, negotiating skills and pull-through tactics.
Retains, expands and grows account revenue through account growth, margin management and implementation of sales and marketing initiatives in the key buying locations.
Partners with key Sales teams (i.e. Global Sales Organization (GSO) to verify the pull through of intermediary segment strategies and tools in the market.
Achieves local account revenue and sales goals as defined by Market leadership. Develops and achieves operating budgets and manages controllable expenses.
Serves as account’s “local service guarantee” by verifying that outstanding service delivery is maintained at every customer touch point, issues are resolved timely and to the customers’ 100% satisfaction.
Creates strong partnerships between field and corporate by maintaining a productive dialogue and exchange of ideas.
Acts as the customer advocate through understanding the account needs and opportunities.
Identifies emerging business opportunities and risks in the market to determine strategic Sales and Marketing implications and provides feedback to key stakeholders; partners with key stakeholders in account planning and determining strategy execution approaches for the market.
Manages relationships with the key buyers that drive business to the market to optimize account reach and share for the segment.
Develops working relationships with Property staff and provides coaching on specific booking needs to establish pull-through of opportunities of the wholesale segment.
Develops and manages relationships with key buyers that drive business to the local market, optimize share and grow the luxury leisure segment.