The lines between marketing and revenue management have blurred; that might sound strange coming from a lifelong revenue management guy like me, but it’s true.

Sometimes revenue management looks a whole lot like marketing. And sometimes marketing looks a lot like revenue management. But that has less to do with roles and responsibilities and more to do with where hotel marketing technology is headed.

Every day, marketing and revenue tools are becoming more complex, more nuanced. In some instances, they even overlap. And that is forcing marketing and revenue management into the same room, whether they like it or not.

Metasearch is a great example of a tool that lives at this new cross-section. At first blush, Metasearch can seem like a marketing function. You place an ad on Google. You place an ad on Tripadvisor. You report on things like “Impression Share.” You know… standard marketing stuff. But success with Metasearch also heavily relies on pricing and rate parity, which historically live under revenue management. So the question becomes, who should own this channel?

The truth is: it shouldn’t matter anymore. We’ve reached a critical point as an industry where it’s no longer forward-thinking to believe that marketing and revenue management must collaborate. Organizational success simply demands it.

That’s what we’ve strived to do at Charlestowne Hotels. We make it standard practice that marketing and revenue regularly hear each other’s perspectives, so they can respectfully challenge and learn from each other. And to be honest, those regular sessions are now where all the big ideas come from.

The reason Metasearch is such a good example is that success on this platform relies on a shared knowledge of what matters in both disciplines. If marketing and revenue management don’t understand and—more importantly—don’t agree, there’s just no alignment on strategy. At that point, it becomes almost impossible to do what’s best for the business.

To give an example: Revenue management might look at a tool like Metasearch as just “rate placement,” and if you don’t have the lowest rate, you don’t leverage that placement. Meanwhile, marketing sees Metasearch as a critical touchpoint where guests make final decisions on booking. Yes, rate is important, but sometimes, visibility (just being there) is more important.

It comes down to this… how can you make important decisions without both disciplines being present? More importantly, how can you make the right decision? The short answer: You can’t.

Johnathan Capps
Chief Revenue Officer, Charlestowne Hotels

This article first appeared at tambourine