Hotel Sales, Area Associate Director at Kimpton Hotels

>> My name is Giovanna Slaughter. I'm the area associated director of sales for the Kimpton Hotels of Alexandria, Virginia. Whenever I can just get somebody to say, "Wow. I'm never staying at another hotel company," that's a win for me. Actually I manage 3 hotels. So the Morrison House, the Lorien Hotel and Spa, and the Monaco Alexandra where we are today. Part of my job is to assist the director of sales with more human resource type of responsibilities. Managing the team. Making sure that they're achieving their goals. And also making sure that I'm achieving my goals. Along with that title, I also manage the corporate market. So I also sell on a day to day basis. So I'm prospecting for new business. I'm maintaining existing accounts and working with clients to make sure that they're taken care of. Making sure that I provide them or we provide them with the service that I know that we can offer them. We don't want to share with anyone else. We know we're the best products in our market and we want to make sure that everybody else knows it. So the goals are somewhat financial and then obviously somewhat just maintenance with accounts and digging and finding out, okay, who's using our competitors and how can we shift them from our comp set over to us. That's the fun part. We get to come up with some really creative ideas like slipper socks with a bottle of wine saying, "Cozy up with Kimpton." Or, you know, tea bags that say, you know, "Come enjoy our hospitali-tea." So those are some of the fun things that we get to do just trying to just show companies our creativity. And how when you stay with us it's an experience. You're not just getting a bed and a tub. You can get that anywhere, but with us you're getting an experience. Then the rest of the sales managers handle association, myself corporate, and then SMERF, which is social, military, education, and fraternal. And so people are planning their annual meetings, their board meetings, their executive meetings, sales meetings, things like that. So we work with them to make sure that we capture that business as well. This year I got the job a little bit more than I wanted to, but it all worked out because we have annual trade shows that we attend as a company, as a brand, and then we have certain trips that we take just to represent our hotels or represent our region. We have 12 hotels in the Mid-Atlantic region. 1 in Baltimore, 8 in DC proper, and 3 here. So that's a lot. So typically I go to New York. I go to Philly every year. This year I went to Vegas twice for two trade shows. So, needless to say, I don't need to go back to Vegas. But they were great. I love the trade shows and I love going on these trips because it allows us to connect with our customers. And we strive to try to reach 100 percent occupancy every day. Doesn't always happen, and sometimes we don't want that, but for the most part we're trying to maximize our occupancy, maximize our average daily rate, and at the end of the day achieve the best RevPOR which is revenue per occupied room throughout our comp set.