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Mr. Clarke

Troy Clarke

Food & Beverage Director, Royal Sonesta Hotel Boston

Troy Clarke is passionate about food and beverage. He recently joined the Royal Sonesta Hotel Boston as Director of Food & Beverage. In this role, he oversees all food and beverage operations at the hotel, including the hotel's extensive banquet operation for conferences, weddings and social events; ArtBar Restaurant & Patio; the culinary team, the pastry shop, the beverage team, mini-bar, and in-room dining for the property. The Royal Sonesta Hotel Boston features 22,000 square feet of flexible meeting space and 400 luxurious guest rooms at its location on the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge. On a day to day basis, Mr. Clarke manages budgets, forecasting, menu development, payroll, creative direction and operational opportunities for an $8.4 million operation for Sonesta. This gives him plenty of opportunity to use his strong leadership, innovation and quality control skills. His strategic thinking has made him a leader in hospitality food and beverage, always seeking new trends to share with his team to aide in their growth and development, as well as showing how important knowing who and what you are is to the continued success of your establishment. Mr. Clarke has over 17 years experience in food and beverage with prior management roles at Loews Miami Beach, the Pfister Hotel, Hilton Milwaukee City Center, Ritz-Carlton Grand Cayman, Ritz-Carlton Boston and the Westin Copley Place Boston. Through the years he has worked in all aspects of food and beverage, from washing dishes, waiting tables through banquet manager and outlets manager. In each position he found the opportunity to continue with his education as a sommelier - a personal passion through the years. Mr. Clarke is active in several professional organizations, including membership in the Society of Wine Educators, the United States Bartenders Guild, Guild of Sommeliers, American Sommelier, and is also a Hotel F&B Council Member. He is a candidate for Best Sommelier in America 2011.

Mr. Clarke can be contacted at 617-806-4301 or tclarke@sonesta-boston.com

Coming up in October 2020...

Revenue Management: Maximizing Profit

Hotel Revenue Management continues to evolve at a blistering pace. Driven by technological innovation and new distribution channels, there are some dynamic opportunities for expansion in this fast-growing field. The technology is primarily designed to help revenue managers further refine their operations and pricing models to maximize hotel profit. For example, hotels can't be all things to all people, so a key strategy is to precisely identify their target audience. By employing geo-targeting techniques and analyzing behavior such as previous bookings, on-property purchases and online shopping practices, there is an increased capability to define guest demographics. By segmenting customers in more specific ways, hotels are able to create more personalized experiences which, in turn, allow managers to optimize their room rates. It is also an effective way to fulfill the unique needs and preferences of the individual. Another methodology is to consistently monitor the competition's pricing strategies. There are software tools that analyze a competitor's current rates, and then allow a hotel to make its own pricing adjustments. It is also a useful means to conduct forecasting models. Other technologies that are being integrated into a revenue manager's toolkit include Artificial Intelligence in the form of automated algorithms, and Voice Recognition (VR) for data inquiries, rate changes, and booking behavior. Predictive and analytic software programs are also being leveraged to provide more forward-looking data, instead of the usual reliance on historical performance. These metrics allow managers to be more proactive - rather than reactive - with their revenue strategy. The October issue of the Hotel Business Review will examine these developments and report on how some leading hotels are executing their revenue management strategies.


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