Interview: Starwood Senior VP Of Sales For N. America Tim Roby

Stamford, Conn. - Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide in recent years broadened a structure that incorporates regional "metro market" teams to cover sales across all its properties. Tim Roby, Starwood's senior vice president of sales for North America, in late June at the company's headquarters here updated BTN's Michael B. Baker on the restructuring. Roby also projected continued strength in corporate transient demand and more rate increases in the month ahead.

How has your metro market sales approach progressed?

Basically, we've [adapted] our sales force in markets where it makes sense, where we have overlapping resources. Now, a customer can call one salesperson and be able to book our entire portfolio. For instance, in New York, we have 11 hotels within that metro market. Customers love it. It's an easy way of doing business, and it does a couple things for us. It frees up resources, so we can build new business that our resources couldn't before, at least not to the level we expect them to, and we've been able to have our salespeople really drill down deeply and become more of a partner with our customers, because they represent the portfolio in that market. They're experts within our brands and within the markets, and they deal with one customer. We're in New York, Atlanta, San Francisco, San Diego, [Boston, Maui, Toronto and Washington, D.C.], and we're going to launch in several other cities in the United States. We're not taking a cookie-cutter approach and doing it the same in each market. If you look across each one of these metro markets, you'll find they're built and tailored differently. We have scaled it to a degree where our markets, New York being the largest, make sense. You don't have 25 to 50 properties that one salesperson is representing in a market. They become experts, and our customers have grown to rely on and appreciate that.

Are these supplemental to in-house sales teams at hotels, or do they replace them?

It depends. In some cases, we've chosen to keep, for instance, convention services on-property. In some cases, we may keep catering on-property. In other cases, we bring them all under one roof. We have kept all of our directors of sales and marketing on-property. It frees that individual up to become more strategic, because that's what we're asking of our sales leaders, and they're really forging deeper relationships with the customers. They're no longer dealing with the day-to-day management of the sales staff. They set strategies and are in constant communication with the sales managers and associates within the metro market.

Have you been looking to push dynamic pricing models for corporate transient business?

Right now, we're in fixed rates. From a dynamic standpoint, we will look at it, but the way we're set up right now is fixed pricing. We're coming up to the request-for-proposal season, and we expect more companies will tighten controls and have more tools to help them move the business into our portfolio.

With the recent explosion of third-party RFP services for meetings, have you had to change your strategy?

We have excellent relationships with the third parties and in fact have worked with them—and some other chains have as well—so the leads that are coming in through their systems and into our sales organizations are better qualified. So, they get to the right properties, and we as well as the third party are responding quickly enough to customers.

What are your projections for travel demand?

The year started out strong with the first quarter. It's the 11th straight quarter of [revenue per available room] growth above our competitors. We're seeing very solid growth in business travel as well as leisure travel, and we've seen healthy growth in group travel, especially as it pertains to the good growth year we had in 2011. We're very optimistic, especially with what you hear in the news and read in the papers, with the issues that Europe's going through. We always are on the lookout for anything from an economic standpoint so we can be proactive against it, but we're very optimistic and positive on the future. We're around 6 percent to 8 percent RevPAR growth, so we have seen strong growth in our rates. Certainly, there are pockets that aren't as healthy, but overall throughout North America, we've seen healthy growth, and that's been the case for the last two years in all segments.

Do any markets stand out right now?

San Francisco actually is probably the strongest right now, or has been for us. New York, obviously, leads the country and remains strong for us. Chicago is having a very healthy, robust year as well. There's really not any major market that comes to mind that's not. But if you look across our portfolio, it's San Francisco, New York and Chicago that are leading the way right now.

Is this all a mix of domestic and inbound international travel?

Yeah, international growth is up, especially from emerging markets like China and South America and into gateway cities like San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, but we also see in the Midwest really good international growth, out of Chicago and into the surrounding area there. If you look at it from a total-segment basis, the international growth is outpacing other growth, and we see that trend continuing.

How are hotels on the luxury side performing?

That's the fastest-growing segment in our portfolio: the five- and four-star, with W, St. Regis and our Luxury Collection. That's on an international basis as well. Even from a RevPAR and an occupancy standpoint, we're seeing growth outpace the other segments within our portfolio, so it's very healthy. A lot of people say we're still in a recession, and a lot of people are still feeling it, but throughout the post-recession period, luxury categories have led the way.

Have you seen much of a response from the business travel community on your investment in the Sheraton brand?

We've had very positive feedback. We just came off a customer event that we do each year called Rendezvous, which was in Seattle. There's been just huge positive buzz regarding the Sheraton revitalization. You can see it in New York, where we're finalizing that renovation. The meeting planning community has definitely been very positive about the changes: the Link [lobby social and business center], the club level and all of that. It's a revitalized brand, and if you look across our portfolio, those properties are performing very strong from a historical standpoint.