Wyndham Shifts Management.

<B>Wyndham Shifts Management.</B>

As part of a management reshuffling last week, David Johnson, who had been president of the Wyndham hotel division, was named executive vice president of sales and marketing for Wyndham International.

In this newly created position, Johnson has responsibility for the company's entire revenue management operation, including national sales, centralized reservations and marketing. Stanley "Mack" Koonce, the former executive vice president and chief administrative officer, who previously had many of those responsibilities, left Wyndham in the reorganization.

"It's an exciting time for us," said Johnson, a 15-year Wyndham veteran. "We have the clarity of product and distribution in key markets to really make an impact." In all, Dallas-based Wyndham International owns, leases, manages or franchises 300 hotels with more than 70,000 rooms.

Approaching the travel buyer, Johnson said he supports negotiating at the national sales level--where it makes sense. "We listen to each customer and try to understand their buying patterns," he said. "In some cases, we'll proceed with the national sales approach, but in other instances, it might make more sense to negotiate on the individual property level. We want to be flexible and do what best serves the client."

Johnson agreed that getting negotiated rates loaded promptly into the GDS has become an issue for many buyers (see story, page 1). "We pride ourselves on getting the rates into the system as soon as possible," he said, "but rate loading is a double-edge sword. There are clients, after all, who don't always inform us in a timely way that the rate we've offered has been accepted." As a backup procedure, Wyndham will work with its travel consortia partners to confirm rates are loaded, going so far as to book a dummy reservation. "These rates need to be accessible, available and bookable," he said.

Johnson added that last room availability--another hot button for buyers--is "dictated by supply and demand in a particular market. But we will negotiate it with key accounts that partner with us nationally."

A hot button for hoteliers, meanwhile, is getting clients to fulfill the volume commitments they have negotiated. "Our first question to a new customer is, 'What is your compliance rate?' We want customers to be candid with us," he said, "it helps for us to know."

For more than a year, Wyndham has been working on providing buyers with electronic full folio data. "It's still a huge priority," Johnson said. "We want to do it right, because our intention is to offer it on a national basis."

Also part of Wyndham International's reorganization, president Fred Kleisner was named to the additional position of CEO. He succeeds James Carreker, who remains chairman.