Revenue manager

I started my career at The Westin Banyan Tree Hotel in 2000 as an IT concierge. My first role was to help foreign guests get on the Internet while they were here on their overseas trips. It was also my responsibility to help business guests with a variety of requests, from visits to government and corporate offices to shopping.

I also provided revenue reports to the revenue manager and the sales and marketing director.

In 2002, I was offered a job by The Regent Hotel (now The Four Seasons) as a marketing analyst and assistant to the sales director. In this position I was required to produce reports for the marketing director and the sales team.

This required the analysis of market conditions and trends in the hotel industry, the identification of business opportunities and the use of SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis for our business.

I also handled requests from corporate clients who were looking for annual deals on room rates.

There was indeed a lot of information to collect and analyse and I was keen to produce great reports.

My career continued with the same hotel for the next two years, during which time I was promoted to take responsibility for the database systems used for sales and marketing functions.

In 2006 I was offered the position of revenue manager with the Nai Lert Park, a Raffles International Hotel in Bangkok. This was a step up from my previous position, as my priority now is to manage the reservation team to ensure that we maximise revenue from individual, group and conference business.

I have to maintain the room and banqueting room forecasts, budgets and statistics to assist the marketing function. I also work on yield management with the goal of maximising profits based on projected demand and optimisation of revenue per available room by analysing and forecasting demand.

From this we establish effective sales strategies and an optimal market mix of clients.

Overall the most important thing is to work effectively with the sales director and hotel team to establish successful strategies to increase revenue from both rooms and catering.

Finally, I always try to be prepared for every eventuality, as you never know what is going to happen. And whatever it might be, I always try my best.