Editorial Board   Guest Author

Ms. Grennan

Kim Grennan

Co-Founder & CEO, FindSideGigs.com

Kim Grennan is the Founder and CEO of FindSideGigs.com, a free lead generation service for freelancers and those wanting to make extra money part-time. Ms. Grennan is also the CEO of Axle Eight, a marketing and strategy agency for tech start-ups. Over her career, Kim has worked with 100+ companies in a variety of industries helping launch and scale their businesses. Prior to starting FindSideGigs.com and Axle Eight, Ms. Grennan worked at a sell-side investment bank in Chicago specifically focusing on deals within the plastics, chemicals, and packaging industries. Wanting to get more into the tech world career-wise, Ms. Grennan transitioned from investment banking into corporate strategy where she joined Verizon's Global Innovation Team working at the Verizon Innovation Center in Boston. Here she focused on crafting organization-wide strategies for entering new non-core B2B markets such as healthcare, education, IoT, digital media, virtual reality, augmented reality, energy, and transportation. She was also responsible for building strategic partnerships and sourcing venture capital and M&A deals within these non-core B2B markets. After Verizon, Ms. Grennan wanted to focus more on working directly with start-up companies so she made the switch to a private design and innovation agency and built out their first market research and strategy business unit. Here she worked with more than 50 companies to bring their products to market. She holds her M.B.A. from Loyola University Chicago and her Bachelors in Economics from The University of Arizona. Ms. Grennan currently lives in Scottsdale, AZ with her husband and her English Lab named Nellie. In her spare time she actively advises several start-up companies, is a personal finance nut, and an active real estate investor. Please visit http://findsidegigs.com for more information.

Ms. Grennan can be contacted at 480-225-7178 or kim.grennan@gmail.com

Coming up in June 2018...

Sales & Marketing: Opinions Matter

Hotel Sales and Marketing Directors manage a complex mix of strategies to attract and convert customers into guests. Part of their expertise includes an awareness of customer behavior during the reservation process, so they can make sure their hotel is favorably positioned. One such trend is the growing popularity of travel review sites. According to one recent survey, 61% of prospective customers consult online reviews in order to validate information about the hotel before making a purchasing decision. Another survey found that the average hotel customer reads between 6-12 reviews across 4-10 properties before making a final decision on where to stay. Similarly, other studies have shown that consumer reviews are a more trusted source of information for prospective customers than other kinds of marketing messaging. In fact, reviews are often considered to be as influential as price regarding whether a customer decides to complete a purchase or not. Plus, travel sites with the most reviews - including recent reviews from satisfied customers and thoughtful responses from staff - were also found to be the most appealing. So having positive reviews on a travel website is essential and can help to increase a hotel's conversion rates dramatically. Of course, there are all kinds of additional marketing strategies for sales and marketing directors to consider - the importance of video and the emergence of live streaming; the implementation of voice search; the proliferation of travel bots; and the development of Instagram as an e-commerce platform. The June Hotel Business Review will report on some of these issues and strategies, and examine how some sales and marketing professionals are integrating them into their operations.
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