Actual Career Feature: For the past decade, the position of Director of Sales & Marketing has become one of the most frequently positions asked by our clients in China to provide suitable talents for;

Whereas traditionally the Executive Chef would be the highest paid Excom Member in a hotel, after the General Manager, and often better paid than the # 2 of the hotel, this enviable position has gone to the Director of Sales & Marketing position in many hotels in China.

One would think therefore that a career in Sales & Marketing is one of the best career paths to follow in an hoteliers’ career in China, and there should be many hoteliers competing for a position as Director of Sales & Marketing. The reality is however different: There is a severe shortage of qualified Sales & Marketing talents for hotels in China, and as a result, for the ones who chose to be in such roles, the choices are abundant.

This makes it that many a hotel finds itself at the end of the line, never being the first choice by the talents available.  How this situation has come to be, in China?
 
There are several factors at play that have lead to this situation, and by the nature of these causes, a short-term solution is not in sight, to alleviate the shortage. From our constant contact with hoteliers in Sales & Marketing we can determine the following factors.

• A fast growth in # of hotels that can’t keep up with supply of young talents 
• Rapid Localization & Over-Promoting
• Transition to other industries
• Pressure to deliver the impossible

Fast growth

One of the most logical and common reasons for the shortage of any talents in the Hotel & Hospitality applies not only to Sales & Marketing, but basically all disciplines in hotel management is of course the unprecedented fast growth of the # of hotels operating in China.

It is without doubt and widely reported in the media that the growth of the hotel sector in China is one of the fastest right now anywhere in the world. With many hotel groups going from 5 â€" 50 hotels within 5 years and the many cities in China where new 5* hotels are opening 2- 5 per year in the last decade, it’s only normal that there is a high demand, for all management positions to be filled, sourcing from a population that with 1.6 billion simply lacks experienced managers that are ready & qualified for the many Director & Manager roles needed.
 
Rapid Localization & Promotions

Sales & Marketing is one of the positions that is natural to be localized, departing from hiring originally more experienced expatriates for Director Level roles when many hotel companies came new to the China market. Mostly based on the requirement to be able to speak the local language, predominantly Mandarin that is, but also to understand the local market place, and to know the clientele, requires the Sales & Marketing Director to be ‘local’ as much as possible. 

The problem came with the speed of localization. Wherever local staff was being groomed to be a potential Director of Sales & Marketing, they were of course also very desirable to be pinched by another hotel in the same location.

Therefore many a DOS has been offered the DOSM role by the competitor, not because they were ready for the role but because they the few that were locally available. Whereas in more mature markets it would take at least 5 years for a DOS to make it to DOSM, by natural turnover and promotion, and from being a Sales Executive to Senior Sales, DOS and finally a DOSM in a 10 â€" 15 years time span, in China these promotions could be made within 4-5 years.

On paper it may look like that this rapid progress on the career ladder from Sales Executive to Director of Sales (& Marketing) must be the resume of a real “Sales Tiger’ and must-have talent, whereas in fact the fast moves were based on too many hotels eager to hire the best available, and offering promotion to lure them.

Or due to senior managers being promoted and transferred, if not hired by other hotels, the vacancy of the boss is frequently available and if not given to the 2nd in command, this person will leave the company very soon, for other offers.
 
Transition to other industries.

Now, here is a cause that is more prevalent in Sales & Marketing, than some other management disciplines but augmented by the current economic situation in China. The skills and experience of a qualified Sales & Marketing Manager / Director can of course be applied to other products than just hotels.

This applies less to the purely operational management functions like in Rooms, Food & Beverage, Culinary, Housekeeping etc. A good Salesman can sell a fridge to an Eskimo and so the transition from selling hotel rooms to selling something else is not too difficult to be made.

But while hotels seldom hire Sales people from other industries, many of the Commercial Services Industries and Luxury Goods Sector are very keen on hiring staff from 5* hotels. Especially the Luxury Goods Sector which has equally boomed in China, has taken advantage of sourcing Sales & Marketing talents, from 5* hotels. Regardless if the product is an exclusive French Cognac, a Swiss watch, an Italian label of leather goods, or a British sports car;

They need sales people who are familiar with the world of luxury, those who have client contacts among those who can afford luxury goods and know how to groom & present themselves well, familiar with having a sales-talk while drinking champagne at a cocktail party. Name any luxury brand you can imagine, and China is probably their # 1 or # 2 largest market, or region of fast growth.

We seldom see that a Hotel Sales ends up selling machine parts for industrial engines, or into the FMCG markets, selling cup noodles, shampoo’s or light bulbs. No, those hotel sales talents with a bit of panache all end up in the
luxury good sectors. And what’s more, these sectors do not only offer a cool brand image & product to sell, they pay extremely well too.
 
Pressure to deliver the impossible.

While a good sales person is able to sell ‘anything’ they are of course not magicians who can change a market situation, in the face of strong competition.

With the ‘build-it-and-they-will-come’ attitude many a 5* hotel project is conceived and / or the lack of realistically projected feasibility studies before deciding which hotel is to be built where, China is not short of hotels that are simply in the wrong location, or too old or too remote, or otherwise a hard-sell, compared to other bidders in the market.

And while these weaknesses are hard to overcome, the solution is sought into bringing a top Sales & Marketing Director. However the good & experienced Sales Talents can estimate very quickly if a hotel product is a winner. They can determine based on their experienced if selling this hotel would be easy-pie or quite hard to achieve.

Especially when sales targets are set too high, which Sales Talent would burn himself to go for mission impossible? In the attempt to still lure strong Sales & Marketing talents to certain hotels, there has been much attempt to upgrade
the S&M role to an ‘EAM’ title and it has been a trend in the last 10 years to appoint accomplished Sales & Marketing Directors into the General Managers role.

That is in itself a fine development if somebody has been a Director of Sales & Marketing for over 10 years, and part of the Excom of the hotel, he / she would be experienced enough to take on a GM role. But the hotel then better be a well-oiled machine, with smooth service and not many operational challenges, so that the focus on Sales & Marketing pays off. If a General Manager with mostly Sales & Marketing experience has to handle primarily issues on the smooth running of the hotel, or the lack there-of he / she may not have that experience to fix the hotel first, before selling it.

There is hardly anything a great Sales & Marketing person can do when he is able to sell the hotel but the guests are then not served well, the hotel experience does not deliver and the hotel has dozens of operational issues, which after all makes the hard acquired new clientele not repeat the business.
 
The above 4 factors are greatly influencing today the available Sales & Marketing talents for hotels. As an Executive Search Firm we appreciate that our clients have high expectations from us to get the best possible Director of
Sales & Marketing from us. Yet we can not ignore that the reality is that we can in many cases only offer a handful of choices, with admittedly rather shallow credentials to those hotels that are simply not the TOP hotels in the market.

And the candidates that we find to be available and interested in such jobs all have, without fail, 3-5 other job offers in hand. When demand is strong, hotels can build more properties, or add rooms.

The luxury goods sector just produces more of these goods in factories, to satisfy the demand in China. When it comes to Sales & Marketing talents for hotels in China, TOP Hoteliers knows them and can reach them to see if they are available and interested in a certain position that is available.

Unfortunately we can not produce more Sales & Marketing talents ourselves, nor can we stop the growing demand for them.

René J.M. Schillings, a Dutch National, is the Managing Director of TOP Hoteliers, the first specialized hospitality recruitment agency to open offices in the People’s Republic of China (in 2004). Based in Hong Kong he devotes most of his time managing the 3 offices in Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Beijing, where his team of consultants recruit hotel managers for all major international and some local hotel companies in China. His company was very early to recognize the need for local talent, Mandarin speaking expatriates and China experienced expatriates. His knowledge of the China Hotel Industry stems from his career as Hotelier in China that began in 1997. He has a BA in Hotel Management from Stenden University, a.k.a Hotel Management School Leeuwarden, The Netherlands and an MA in International Tourism & Leisure Studies from Metropolitan University in London, England. He is a keen observer of industry trends and has published numerous articles on HR issues in hospitality in China & Asia. Working in China, Hong Kong & Korea since the late 1990’s, René has lived in Hong Kong from 2005 to 2012 and resides since 2013 in Thailand with his wife and 2 children.

www.tophoteliers.com