Yulia Kudryavtseva
Senior Portfolio Revenue Manager – IHG Revenue
I
’ve started in the Hospitality Industry while being a student at
the State University of Management (specialty Management
in Hotel & Tourism Business). The first position was in the
Reservations Department which is very common and natural
start for a career in revenue management. During next years I
was growing in marketing which is also very close to Revenue
management in terms of channels /content management and
also analytical part – then joining Korston Hotels & Malls chain
as Revenue management. That was a very exciting period for the
brand, when they did a rebranding of old “Soviet” Orlenok hotel into
Korston – also opening 2nd newly build property in Kazan. I was lucky
to be a part of a very strong team with most heads having international
chains background. That was a great chance to grow in Revenue management b e c a u s e
at that time the knowledge was accumulated within International chains and very few courses
in Revenue Management were available. After several years in Korston, I’ve continued to search
new career opportunities and joined Azimut Hotels chain as a cluster Revenue Manager being
responsible during next few years for supporting their growing portfolio of hotels – including
rebrandings, openings in different cities of Russia. The next logic step was an International hotel
chain and I was really happy to join IHG on cluster Revenue Manager position.
To be a revenue manager in one hotel and to do revenue management for several hotels at
once should be a very responsible and difficult task, especially in a big company like IHG. Can
you please describe your day and in general your job?
ith technologies that are available now in many cases, it’s possible to do Revenue Management
remotely. I’m supporting hotels in very different locations and even countries, speaking
different languages – in Moscow, Istanbul, Krakow, Baku, Tbilisi, Yerevan, etc. Every day I have 2-4
calls scheduled with hotels. I also spend about 1-2 hours for a call preparation and about an hour
to create call notes with a summary of actions discussed. In our regional office, we have 2 more
people besides me looking at the hotel’s revenue performance. We are all part of a bigger European
team, and as we all work remotely it’s especially important that we have some team calls/meetings
to exchange best practices and communicate with each other. We also make hotel visits at least
once a year. So, there is quite a lot of travel within the region as well.
Not all hotels have a revenue department in the hotel so how many rooms should the hotel
have to create a revenue department? Why it is necessary or/and important to have it?
would say that each hotel no matter of size needs to have some dedicate Revenue Management
resource. For smaller hotels, remote support would be enough to set up correct positioning, pricing
to maximize revenue. Reservations manager will be the key contact for remote/cluster RM to support
him with daily routines. Full-service hotels with conference facilities and big group potential need
to have RM on-property. In this case, the responsibilities of RM will be wider focusing on optimizing
business mix, groups control. If all revenue centers need regular review and RM approach, Revenue
Director can be assigned to implement the approach of Total Revenue management.
Forecasting and flexibility: Should a professional who is responsible for hotel revenue follow
the political, economic and diplomatic relations happening between countries, federations or
Unions to do right forecasting?
es, sure, Revenue Manager should be open-minded person, with erudition broad enough to
review and analyze market info, not only on a micro but macro level as well. We now live in a
very fast-moving world where each year can be different from the previous one because of global
trends. It’s making Revenue Manager’s work more complex but more interesting as well than
several years ago when seasonality was the main factor to be considered when forecasting.
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