Starwood Promotes Hicks To Top Global Sales Role

Starwood Hotels & Resorts late last month promoted Christie Hicks to senior vice president of worldwide sales, expanding her role and broadening her sales purview at a time when the chain is poised to bolster its multinational presence.

Hicks is charged with managing sales strategies and personnel across Starwood's portfolio. Prior to the appointment, Hicks oversaw a salesforce of 200 and managed more than $1.5 billion in annual sales in North American group, leisure and corporate transient businesses, the company said.

With its pending acquisition of the Le Meridien Hotels & Resorts portfolio of more than 130 properties in 56 countries expected to close before year-end, Hicks said Starwood also is following clients into other world markets. "There are two ways growth is going to come," she said. "Number one is the existing accounts and where they're going in terms of emerging markets. That's going to give us great opportunity that coincides with our development growth. The other piece is those emerging markets and the businesses that are headquartered there and the outbound traffic. You have inbound and outbound and if we deploy, segment and cover correctly, we'll be able to make certain we leverage both sides of that equation."

Hicks takes on the role during a cycle that is largely considered more beneficial to hotel suppliers than in recent years. Hicks said next year corporate rate percentage increases would be in "double digits. It's so determined by where the market is and what the customer's availability is to drive share. It's no secret that rates absolutely are increasing significantly. There is huge demand and supply is shrinking."

Hicks added: "Corporate transient is definitely making a huge comeback and that's happened over the past 15 or 18 months. The cycle always is interesting to watch. When the transient market gets good is when we have to be careful about treating our group customers correctly and managing their business correctly."

As of early this month, Hicks said Starwood still was in the midst of examining requests for proposals from corporate clients—the company is about 45 percent through, she said—and noted that buyers are finding the season a challenge. "Negotiations are a little tougher this year for the customer," Hicks said. "They like it when we give a rate, they give a counter and we say yes. We like it when we give a rate and they say yes. There are two sides to everything. The back and forth of the negotiation is taking a little longer because hotels and clients are doing a lot of evaluation. They're trying to determine what else is in the marketplace and what other options there are—again, on both sides of the equation."

Hicks said the company has grown savvier, placing more emphasis on metrics and measurement and further holding corporate clients accountable to volume agreements. "What we're finding is that hotels are being a little more selective," Hicks said. "If a customer says, 'I need X and I'm going to give you Y,' we're going to measure that much more closely than we did in the past. That's only fair."

Hicks began her career with Hyatt Hotels in 1985. After more than a decade in regional and national sales roles, Hicks joined Starwood in 1999.