Tell us about your team
The team I work in belongs to the Lodging Account Management family – it is called CHAMP (Centralised Hub for Account Management Performance). Our primary focus is managing relationships between Expedia Group and small and medium-sized properties.
The team’s main tasks involve engaging in consultative conversations with relevant hotel partners to identify personalised, data-driven solutions aimed at generating more bookings through Expedia.
Tell us about your role
Our day is structured with 80% dedicated to proactive outreach and 20% to handling reactive cases. Proactive outreaches entail actively calling partners to understand how their hotel is performing and their particular business needs.
We leverage insights from these conversations to recommend personalised solutions to how they can enhance their Expedia listing using our various products and tools. Reactive cases involve addressing partner requests which they contact Expedia for.
What skill sets do you think are required to be successful in your role?
Communication skills are essential; we talk to hotel partners for the majority of our day and it is important to be able to relay information in a concise and persuasive manner whilst efficiently navigating the conversation.
Negotiation skills can also be useful as there are often times we receive pushback from partners regarding the products we are pitching so you need to be able to handle and overcome them.
Time management is also required to ensure we are effective with our time so that we can maximise our impact on the team by calling as many partners as possible.
What technologies/ tools do you work with?
Our work heavily involves Salesforce for both proactive and reactive tasks. Salesforce serves as the database for all our properties, with a tool within it seeking properties which have not been contacted recently with high-value opportunities. These properties are then pushed to us through the tool and we are shown what the most relevant personalised opportunities are for the property.
Expedia Partner Central, Expedia’s extranet, is used to analyse properties and gain a comprehensive understanding before initiating contact. We were given extensive training on how to utilise both these softwares at the beginning of the graduate program.
What is your favourite thing about working at Expedia Group?
It has got to be how supportive the culture is and how many opportunities there are to grow your career. Most of the graduates were assigned to mentors across different parts of the business, which allows us to gain a better understanding of the organisation as a whole. Even beyond the relationships with our mentors, we are encouraged to network across the business and everyone has been really receptive to giving us a greater insight into their role.
We also have the opportunity to apply for project gigs, which are projects we can dedicated 1-8 hours of our week to across different teams in the business. It really is a great environment to grow both personally and professionally in!