Personal Selling in the Hospitality Sector

Personal Selling in Hospitality

Personal selling in the tourism and hospitality industry is an essential part of destination and hotel sales, driving base demand, creating awareness, and is becoming more competitive than ever before as organizations' continue to learn the benefits of this marketing component. This paper will analyze some of the traits that could be associated with the ideal salesperson in this industry by reviewing the literature as well as conducting an interview with a marketing professional who is a representative of the Hilton Hotel organization. Above all other traits, it was found that the ideal salesperson should have impeccable interpersonal skills that can address the personal issues that a potential client may have and solve their unique problems. Customer's problems are ultimately their needs and these needs can be met by tailoring the marketing message in a personalized way to address the individual needs found in potential clients.

Discussion

A majority of the organizations within the tourism industry have customer relationship management (CRM) systems that have been developed to strategically market to their customer bases that often focus on customer rewards and loyalty programs (Vogt). While CRM programs are essential to fostering customer loyalty and maintaining relationships, they are limited in regards to bringing new clients into the customer base. In fact, much of the literature is devoted to CRM.

In one study a meta-analysis was conducted between 2008 and 2010 and found that the success of loyalty programs was a popular topic while personal selling was sparsely mentioned; these studies addressed various topics including the factors characterizing successful loyalty programs across industries (McCall and Voorhies, 2010); loyalty within the casino industry (Hendler and LaTour, 2008); loyalty programs within the hotel industry (Hu et al., 2010); and a comparison of loyalty programs in the airline and hotel industries (DeKay et al., 2009) and more general studies on CRM were conducted in the hotel industry (Lo et al., 2010) and in the restaurant industry (Asatryan and Oh, 2008), the latter with an interesting application of psychological ownership theory (Line and Runyan).

In a more hands-on approach to marketing, personal selling may involve direct person-to-person contact with a customer or contact via technology and personal selling techniques can be advantageous because they allow you to custom-fit a sale pitch and sometimes address individual questions and concerns (Wyoming Travel & Tourism). Techniques of personal selling include the use of travel centers, telephone correspondence, consumer tradeshows and public engagements. Web sites that are interactive and sell products using tools like instant messaging and e-mail may also be considered a personal selling technique.

A stellar personal seller will generally have certain characteristics. A list of the top five seller traits that apply to personal selling was identified and includes (McCall):

1. Creativity

2. Passion

3. Integrity

4. Tenacity

5. Commitment

Creativity is commonly among the most desirable traits because an ideal salesperson will have an affinity for the non-obvious solution to the client's needs. Other lists of the top qualities that a successful personal salesperson should have also include other factors such as being personable, ambitious, confidence, and adaptable (Smith).