TL;DR
Hotels are easy to list and hard to sell to, because the owner, the brand and the management company often decide different things. Map the hotels in your area, work out who runs each one, and pitch the role that owns your category.
Find hotels on a mapListing every hotel in a city takes minutes. Selling to them is harder, because a single hotel can involve three different companies: the owner of the building, the brand on the sign, and a management company that runs it day to day. Each decides different things. Before you email anyone, work out which of the three buys what you sell.
Owner, brand and operator
Party | What they usually decide | Example of what they buy |
|---|---|---|
Brand (franchisor) | Standards every hotel must meet, approved vendors for brand items | Booking systems, brand-required amenities, signage |
Management company (operator) | How the hotel runs, often across many properties | Staffing, software, linen, maintenance contracts, energy |
Owner | Large spending and renovations | Renovation, furniture, building systems |
The hotel itself (GM and department heads) | Day-to-day purchasing within budget | Supplies, local services, guest experience items |
An independent hotel often combines all of these in one person or a small team. A branded hotel run by a management company spreads them out. Many brands publish approved vendor programmes, so for brand-required items, getting approved by the brand can matter more than winning individual hotels.
The four parties behind a branded hotel, and what each one usually decides.
Who to contact inside a hotel
Role | What they care about | Good fit for |
|---|---|---|
General manager | Guest scores, revenue, staff | Anything that touches the whole operation |
Director of sales | Group and corporate bookings | Lead generation, CRM, event and group tools |
Chief engineer or director of maintenance | Building systems, energy, repairs | HVAC, energy, maintenance contracts |
Executive housekeeper | Rooms, linen, cleaning | Linen, cleaning supplies and services |
Food and beverage director | Restaurant, bar, banquets | Food suppliers, kitchen equipment, POS |
Purchasing manager (larger hotels) | Supplier terms and consolidation | Most recurring supplies |
At a management company, the equivalents sit at regional or corporate level: a vice president of operations, a director of procurement, a regional director of sales.
Building the list
Start with the hotels in your area or region, then add the operators behind them:
Map the hotels. Pull every hotel inside the area you serve from a map, with the website and phone where listed.
Separate branded from independent. The brand is usually in the name or on the website.
Find the operator. Hotel websites, job postings and the management company's own "portfolio" page often name who runs a property. Management companies like to list the hotels they manage.
Group by operator. If one management company runs eight hotels on your list, that's one conversation, not eight.
Find the role. Use the table above, and the hotel's own team or careers page.
Timing that helps
Openings and rebrandings. A hotel changing brand or opening fresh is choosing many suppliers at once. Hotel trade news covers both.
Renovations. Announced renovations mean furniture, fixtures and systems are being bought.
New management. A hotel that switches management companies often reviews its vendors in the months after.
Budget season. Many hotels plan next year's spending in the autumn, so that's a good time for anything that needs a budget line.
What to say
Hotel managers get pitched constantly. Be specific to their property:
Hi [Name], I noticed [hotel] has [something specific: a recent renovation, a new conference space, reviews mentioning a particular issue]. We work with [type of hotels] on [what you do], including [a nearby hotel, if you have permission to name it]. Would it be worth 15 minutes to see whether it fits [hotel]?
Doing it with ManyPI
Disclosure: ManyPI is our product.
Map Search lets you draw an area on a map and get the hotels inside it from OpenStreetMap, with website and phone where the map lists them. Save them to a lead list, and Save and enrich looks for the manager's or owner's email. For the operator side, describe it in a sentence, such as "hotel management companies running branded hotels in Florida, with the director of procurement's email", and the agent researches it on the live web. Every email is checked before sending. The Map Search page shows how it works.
A hotel operator search typed into the ManyPI agent.
One thing to watch: people move between hotels, especially within a management company's portfolio. Check the person is still in the role before a big push, because an email to last year's GM goes nowhere.
Written by
Ole Mai
Founder / ManyPI