Nicholas Wright Email & Phone Number

Acton, Act, Au

Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hk

Sydney, Nsw, Au

The senior commercial partnerships leader working with hotel owners and investors at global level across EMEA and APAC regions, working with senior leadership and management to ensure commercial success across revenue and distribution channels, branding, brand compliance, digital sales and marketing channels, operations, finance and reporting for a collection of franchised and strategic managed hotelsWorking to drive optimal top line and operational performance. In addition to that driving strategic hotel partnership acquisitions and leading pre-opening support implementation and on-boarding to StayWell platforms and channels.Key achievements: ● Created, launched, and facilitated a brand-new online training initiative for hotels, focusing on partner technology platforms, HR, company values and key internal programs to ensure a consistent knowledge and usage ● Created a training program called Building Blocks with a strategic focus on group level knowledge consistency across all hotels and across all operational teams particularly on hotel operations, guest experience, CX and SOP’s ● Helped hotels improve their commercial returns by identifying opportunities from guest experience reviews and NPS scores with learnings applied to help drive more direct bookings and drive and hold higher average rates ● Mentorship and training of select hotel leadership, including GM’s and aspiring managers across managed and franchised hotels

Sydney, Nsw, Au

Awarded "General Manager of the Year 2021"● Manage day-to-day operation of 81 room property of $1M+ payroll, spread across two sites, and developed a recovery strategy for property to reposition in a market with changed dynamics ● Re-energise the strong financial position of the iconic hotel, which operates with Tasmania’s only adventure park onsite and is strategically located adjacent to the major tourism drawcard in Launceston, Cataract Gorge. ● Work with the StayWell head office to develop budgetary, revenue and distribution and financial goals and targets for the property as it emerged from the COVID-19 period. ● Engaged with StayWell head office to ensure one of their largest and most commercially important managed properties is set for the best commercial outcomes in a new trading environment.● Realign the profitability of the hotel, ensuring revenue and guest satisfaction targets are met and exceeded.● Co-develop and execute with head office new rates, revenue, distribution and sales and marketing strategies. ● Liaise with suppliers to negotiate trade contracts and ensure positive and successful professional partnerships.● Ensure that all policies, procedures and legislation with regard to brand, personnel, security, cash handling, guest relations, safety and COVID-19 are followed. Key achievements: ● Successfully repositioned the property to profitability within two months of taking over with deliverables exceeding expectations across all metrics including ADR, RevPar and Occupancy ● Successfully transitioned property from legacy server-based property management system to new cloud-based property management and guest relationship technology● Implemented a partial soft refurbishment of hotel rooms, including bedding, technology and other in-room facilities and soft furnishings● Improved guest satisfaction NPS levels with a focus on service delivery, price and maintenance issues to ensure consistency

South Hobart, Tasmania, Au

Acheived a Top 1% hotels in the world (for 2020) with four x Top 10 spots in Australia for TripAdvisor "Best of the Best Travellers Choice" hotels: - #5 Best Small Hotel (Australia)- #6 Best Hotel for Romance (Australia)- #7 Best Hotel for Service (Australia) - #8 Best Hotel for Luxury (Australia) Plus another Top 25 hotels in three categories for Oceania (AU, NZ & Pacific) Leading Tasmania's only Virtuoso hotel as General Manager, I managed day-to-day operation of the property, workforce of 15 staff members and financials and maintain the strong financial position of the hotel and prepare it for a possible sale transaction whilst ensuring its top 5* hotel position within the Australian domestic hotel market. I also manage on-going profitability of the hotel, ensuring revenue and guest satisfaction targets are met and exceeded and develop and execute sales and marketing strategies to ensure business promotion and success. In addition, I liaise with suppliers to negotiate trade contracts and ensure positive and successful professional partnerships and oversee and manage the establishment and management of all budgetary and financial aspects of the hotel. Lastly, I design, develop and curate food and beverage experience strategies to maintain the leading position as well as ensure that all policies, procedures and legislation with regard to personnel, security, cash handling, guest relations, and safety are followed.

My duties included managing hotel’s day-to-day operations, 65 members of staff, maintenance, finance, bar and restaurant operations for a 43 key upscale absolute-beachfront property including one of Vanuatu’s busiest and top-rated restaurants. I ensured high-standard management of Vanuatu’s highest occupancy resort and top-performing strata hotel assets and optimised the operation and management of the strata owners’ agreement and owners’ returns as well as oversaw real estate assets.Furthermore, I contributed personal technological mindset to introduce technology in the property such as new POS, PMS, distribution technology, change the server to cloud and digitalised financial and payroll systems as well as agent and preferred channel partnerships. I designed and implemented strategies for P&L for hotel operations, restaurant and real estate assets for new dynamic rates, revenue and team KPI’s to ensure success and designed and implemented B2B and B2C marketing strategies for quest direct and travel trade as well as optimised the hotel SEO and PPC campaigns and a dedicated budget for AdWords resulting in making the property Vanuatu’s top-performing property with a growing ADR in a market with overall 15% decline.I utilised a historical guest database to target guests to revisit with bonus extras available for early booking/booking direct and oversaw all hiring, budget and payroll procedures as well as developed, reviewed and implemented HR, sales and marketing policies on domestic and international levels. Finally, I managed HR policy and staff engagement processes resulting in decreased payable sick leave obligations by 80% and staff shift no-shows by 50% as well as in the reduction in overtime payments and lowering of the monthly business staffing/labour costs and ensured excellent guest service, online ranking of the property and guest satisfaction levels by implementing customer engagement marcom strategies.

Bangkok, Th

I co-created a B2B advisory and representation business for hotels in Asia Pacific to overcome the properties’ need for business and professional advice on sales, marketing, revenue and distribution, representation, service standards delivery and to provide overall strategic advice and direction to boost success. In addition, I advised 45+ hotel/villa/resort/retreat projects and clients across seven countries for over more than two years resulting in hotels who remained with us for a minimum of 12 months saw at least a 20% YoY increase in business, some saw up to 60% YoY increases.I developed a trade show representation and travel trade database of 20K+ agents globally, finalised 700+ new contracts and attended 10 international sales representation events and 8 international trade shows and developed marketing strategies including online, organic and PPC models, AdWords, newsletters both B2B and guest direct as engagement pieces with strategic call to action. In addition, I managed online and offline branding creative development and coordinated hotel photographers and videographers for hotel shoots in Cambodia, Laos, Sri Lanka and Thailand as well as managed social media presence for select clients, including posting regularly on both Facebook and Instagram and reviewing subsequent images/campaigns and/or associated spends.Moreover, I directed strategic management of PR and communication for select hotels, to target, define and refine the hotel communications strategy and then implement messaging while engaging with all media types including TV/travel programs, online, and offline print, both magazine and newspaper. Finally, I reviewed strategies and curated collection opportunities to help drive revenue to hotels as well as provide strategic ways to help our business stand out with brand ambassador agreements signed with brands and other technology and marketing platforms that had brand alignment.

San Francisco, Ca, Us

As a Director of Sales, I established the first international office, hired local sales and support team in Bangkok, facilitated office fit-out and provided ongoing management of operations and team. I created and promoted brand awareness while leading the sales charge and establishing a sales Beachhead into a competitive market with ongoing development of Asia-centric strategy and educated the market on what cloud-based PMS’ are and why they matter, being one of the latest digital trends in the hotel operations and SaaS space.Furthermore, I identified strategic opportunities and established relationships with ‘influencer’ individuals and industry-aligned businesses where there was overlap for referral and joint partnership benefits as well as developed and implemented strategic branding and content for Asia marketing including online campaigns by creation of targeted database and PPC advertising. I also reported directly to C-level management and largest shareholder on operational and strategic development opportunities and established, managed and maintained relationships with hotel partners as well as secured 60 new client hotel contracts of varying size. Lastly, I planned, organised, presented and delivered monthly Independent Hotel Academies as sales and learning experiences for hoteliers, with sales deliverables as the key aim hosted in various locations across Thailand and Cambodia.

London, Gb

My responsibilities involved researching, identifying and developing approaches of target acquisition for hotel partners and I successfully negotiated and secured contracts for the hotel on most favourable terms including annual fees. I secured onboarding of new hotel partners and notified Smith partners (Conde Nast, Amex etc) about new hotels to the collection. I also managed the accounts and curated the existing hotel partnerships for hotel partners across Asia Pacific - stretching from Sri Lanka in the west to French Polynesia in the east as well as performed business reviews and observation of revenue and production figures and advisement of business opportunities to grow and compliance with partnership agreement terms.In addition, I facilitated training with international Sales teams in Melbourne, London and New York offices and via Smith internal Hotel Support Team and also ensured close collaboration with regional managers, marketing/editorial and sales for marketing initiatives. I handled the bi-annual renewal process including prioritisation of commercially important partners and/or group renewal contracts, recontracting on enhanced terms and ensuring of the fee collection in line with partner obligations. I analysed the demand to ensure commercial prioritisation and ensure delivering and finding solutions to help those who underperform.Lastly, I facilitated weekly Trading Meeting discussing business updates and shared this information with global directors and heads-of-department for awareness and actionable needs and represented and acted as a brand-ambassador for Smith at industry and partner-hosted events. I ensured that hotels were engaged in and supporting the many ongoing online and offline marketing initiatives Smith provided to hotel partners, but also to co-developed those internally with the marketing team by playing the key role as being the person who visited and approved the property and knew how to direct the messaging.

London, Gb

My role of a Trading and Distribution Manager involved managing the accounts of existing hotel partnerships for 220+ hotel partners across Asia Pacific, performing business reviews and observations of revenue and production figures as well as advising business opportunities to grow and compliance with partnership agreement terms. I analysed the demand ensure commercial prioritisation to facilitate delivering and finding solutions to help those who underperform, including, but not limited to, ensuring greater room inventory, demand-driven tactics, moving hotels to automated commission and advisement on rates structures that could maximise opportunity.In addition, I liaised and collaborated with regional managers, marketing/editorial and sales for design of campaigns and maximisation of exposure and solicitation of best-in-class tactical discount and/or value-add exclusive offers for marketing initiatives and facilitated weekly Trading Meeting discussing business updates, obstacles, opportunities and performance of the Asia Pacific region and then shared this information with global directors and heads-of-department for awareness and actionable needs. I optimised revenue opportunities for Smith and collaborated with likes of branded partners from Aman to Alila and many standalone boutique properties to get them onboard for mutually acceptable opportunities to drive business from a discerning traveller and managed and directed the implementation of the Smith SAMS e-commerce platform and digital engagement options it allowed for hotel/villa partners and utilised the macro-level data to monitor travel trends and develop regionally specific seasonal sales and marketing campaigns.

London, Gb

I acted as primary operational contact for all 220+ Asia Pacific hotels and global sales team around booking-related matters and specific time-critical actionable needs and managed the hotel on-boarding and set-up process within the Smith extranet while ensuring data collection and rates configuration in line with business needs. Furthermore, I ensured full hotel compliance with partnership obligations and warning or hotel deactivation where these were not being honoured and secured best-in-class tactical discount and/or value-add exclusive offers for marketing initiatives. Finally, I analysed the demand to ensure commercial prioritisation to facilitate delivering and finding solutions to help those who underperform.

Cotton Tree, Queensland, Au

I represented to the Victorian market Oaks 28-strong (at that time) hotel, resort and apartment portfolio across Australia, New Zealand and Mid-East and secured volume contracts from the corporate/government market whose primary purchasing and contracting decisions were based in Victoria. I also managed accounts of existing partners including the likes of Telstra, Victorian Government (Health and Justice departments), ANZ, NAB, Medibank and many other SME’s. Moreover, I performed quarterly contract reviews to ensure secured contract rates were in line with volume expectations as well as revisited with account-holder where necessary and liaised with stakeholders, facilitated training and provided production updates as well as represented Oaks to corporate travel agencies.

Southbank, Victoria, Au

As a Marketing Executive, I managed the marketing of the full Australasia collection of 280+ properties across Australia, New Zealand and SE Asia (ranging across motels, resorts, hotels, villas, and more) and collaborated with national and international, sales and marketing and finance teams for preparation of specific marcoms as well as managed the single largest marketing tool (and expense) in the annual printed Asia Pacific hotel guide.Furthermore, I ensured content updates of consortia and trade microsites including CRM contact database updates and handled the Choice group relationship with PR agency and managed their efforts and engagement by working closely with state and national tourism boards for development of key branding and business campaigns. Lastly, secured key affiliate partner relationships with Qantas Frequent Flyer, AirNZ Airpoints, HSBC Rewards, American Express and others, as well as engaged in community and social responsibility programs such as Starlight Foundation et al.

Southbank, Victoria, Au

Leadership, training and development of a team of professional and efficient contact centre agents across loyalty, wholesale, groups, corporate and FIT travel; with an explicit aim of increased conversion for CHA's global network

South Brisbane, Queensland, Au

Planning and booking of client travel needs of both the corporate and leisure traveller

Ensuring the best guest experience throughout their stay

Ensuring the best guest experience throughout their stay