A leading hospitality lifestyle brand retained Venari Partners to recruit for the newly created role of Chief Revenue Office. The recruit would be a key position for the business, reporting directly to the CEO and with a seat on the management board. The company’s acquisition by a global private equity firm three years’ previous was followed by a period of significant investment, which meant that the right person needed to be identified quickly to keep the business’s growth on track.
The new hire would be tasked with building upon the company’s existing pricing and revenue management structure, but also with implementing a new, tailored RM system. Their end goal would be to create for the brand a sector-leading dynamic pricing solution.
This task would require a strong project and stakeholder manager, not only to work closely with Business Intelligence and Data Science teams, but also to develop an effective relationship with the private equity partners, to ensure that the company was delivering on its revenue objectives, according to the investor’s challenging business development schedule.
A challenge in the recruitment process was that the brand does not sit within the traditional hotel landscape. This creates a problem when deciding on revenue tools and systems as there isn’t any ‘off-the-shelf’ options. Furthermore, due to the seniority of the role, Venari Partners’ hospitality team knew there was little likelihood of the right candidate (meeting all key criteria) being found in the German city where the role was based. The team therefore undertook an extensive search across the Revenue Management market in Europe.
The search uncovered many excellent candidates and a very strong shortlist was compiled, with the preferred candidate identified early on. After an extensive interview process, all sides were happy they had reached the right outcome in selecting this individual. The successful candidate was able to fully locate to the area and began his new role in October 2019.
The key to Venari Partners’ success during the process was effective communication across the three main stakeholders (the CEO, the operating partner from the private equity group and the candidate). This meant that the right criteria and objectives were agreed upon early on and Venari Partners were assured throughout the process that they understood the requirements of all parties.