Services

Sales & Marketing

As guests' expectations and competition continue to increase, the need for a strong sales effort is crucial in today's environment. "Every person sells" is our company's philosophy, from Sales Directors to Guest Service Personnel to Housekeeping and Maintenance.

First Carolina Management has a proven track record of success. RevPar indexes for our hotel portfolio perform consistently well above the competition in each of our markets with superior hotel sales, marketing & revenue management.

Approach

As a full-service hotel management company, First Carolina Management understands the need for measurable, effective sales and marketing. We believe in reinforcing this expertise at the property level and focusing on creating a highly performing hotel management team. To maximize the sales contribution, our Corporate Sales staff works with each property to develop marketing strategies as detailed in the diagram below.

Experience

The Sales team at First Carolina Management is led by experienced hotel sales professionals with extensive knowledge of local marketing and sales, national sales programs, eCommerce, public and community involvement, market analysis and revenue management. Corporate Sales is responsible for developing and directing the sales efforts to achieve maximum revenue and profitability.

Activities

Our strategic planning is based on analysis data from several industry business intelligence sources. In addition, we take into consideration the competitive market changes, current occupancy trends, and changes to occupancy drivers in the market. Once this data is gathered, it is used to formulate the hotel's annual marketing plan and operating budget. Each hotel develops an annual marketing plan with corporate direction. The hotel's marketing plan includes: market analysis, competitive analysis, product/site analysis, product comparison, rate comparison, key demand generators, event/activities planner, and an action plan.

At the beginning of each quarter, the marketing plan is reviewed and adjusted to reflect any changes in the market. At the corporate level, the annual marketing plan is reviewed along with supporting data for final approval.

We use several system generated reports on a monthly basis to measure each hotel's effectiveness. The STAR report is reviewed monthly to gauge our competitive standing. While a great deal of emphasis is placed on occupancy penetration and RevPar growth, our key focus to property management is to show market share gain.

In an on-going effort to maximize revenue, each hotel management team holds weekly revenue management meetings. Specific system generated reports are reviewed and discussed to determine what actions may be needed. Corporate management holds a similar meeting with hotel management on a monthly basis. At these meetings, sales and marketing efforts are reviewed along with revenue management reports, etc.

Each hotel is expected to meet or exceed the hotel's budgeted RevPar goals based upon market data analysis. In addition, each hotel is expected to increase market share gain over the previous year.