Does My Hotel Need a Director of Sales?

The question most select-service owners ask

Many select-service and independent hotels run without a dedicated Director of Sales, with the general manager or owner selling between everything else while the brand's reservation system and online travel agencies fill the rest. That can work in some markets. In others, the hotel is quietly losing corporate, group and long-stay business to competitors who call on those accounts every week. The real question is not whether the hotel needs a job title, but whether anyone owns the business that requires outbound effort and whether the numbers show it is being captured. This guide walks through the options and how to compare them.

What a Director of Sales actually does

A Director of Sales is responsible for the business that does not book itself.

• Finding and calling on local companies, contractors, project crews, sports teams, churches, schools and event organizers.
• Negotiating corporate and group rates and contracts.
• Managing the account base so repeat business keeps coming back.
• Working with whoever sets rates on segment mix and displacement decisions.
• Training the front desk to convert calls and walk-ins.
• Reviewing the STR report and reporting results to ownership.

Signs you are leaving revenue on the table

Your benchmarking data usually tells you before your gut does. A RevPAR index consistently below 100 means the hotel is earning less than its fair share of revenue in the comp set. Look at whether the gap is in occupancy index or rate index, since an occupancy gap often points to missing accounts. Other signs: weekday occupancy that lags the market, heavy reliance on OTA bookings, no list of top accounts, and group or crew inquiries that go unanswered. You can check your numbers with the RevPAR index calculator.

Option 1: the owner or GM sells

This costs no additional payroll and keeps sales close to the person who knows the hotel best. The trade-off is time. Sales calls are usually the first thing dropped when a housekeeper calls out or a guest issue escalates, and many GMs come up through operations rather than sales. This option works best when the market is small, demand is mostly transient, and the GM actually blocks time every week for outbound calls. To make this option work, keep a short target account list and track every call and proposal in one shared place.

Option 2: a full-time in-house Director of Sales

A dedicated, on-site DOS gives the hotel full-time focus, in-person relationships and someone who can attend local events and walk accounts through the property. The trade-offs are cost, recruiting time and turnover risk, and a smaller hotel may not have enough sellable demand to keep a full-time seller productive. When a strong DOS leaves, their relationships and knowledge can leave with them unless accounts are tracked in a shared system. This option tends to fit larger hotels, hotels with meeting space, or markets with deep corporate and group demand. Before hiring, define the segments the DOS will own, the targets they will be measured on and how they will work with the GM and front desk.

Option 3: a shared or cluster DOS, or a fractional DOS

A cluster DOS sells for two or more hotels, usually under the same ownership or management. It spreads the cost, but competing hotels in the same cluster can create conflicts over which property gets the lead. A fractional DOS is an outside sales leader who works a set number of hours each week for one hotel on a monthly arrangement, bringing experienced sales leadership without a full-time hire. The trade-off is that the person is not on property every day, so the front desk and GM still need to follow through. Either model works best with clear account ownership, weekly reporting and an agreement that the hotel keeps its account and contact records if the relationship ends.

How to measure results

Whichever option you choose, agree on the scorecard up front.

• RevPAR index, occupancy index and ADR index trends against the comp set.
• Revenue by segment: corporate, group, extended-stay and OTA.
• Number of active accounts and production from the top accounts.
• Sales activity: calls, site visits, proposals sent and contracts signed.
• Front-desk conversion on phone and walk-in inquiries.

Give any new sales effort a few months to show results, since account relationships take time, but expect to see activity numbers from the first week. Review these numbers in a short weekly meeting with ownership or the GM, and look at trends over several weeks rather than reacting to a single report. If activity is high but production is flat, revisit the target accounts, the rate offers and how the front desk handles inquiries. Agree on a review point, such as the end of the first quarter, to decide whether to keep, expand or change the approach.

Choosing the right fit

If your index is below 100 and nobody owns sales full time, a fractional approach is a low-risk way to test what focused selling can do. Big Tex offers a Fractional Director of Sales add-on at $299 per month, covering 15 hours a week of market sales, front-desk sales training, weekly reports and STR oversight. Whatever you choose, the goal is the same: someone clearly owns sales and reports on it every week. Start with your numbers in the RevPAR index calculator and decide from there.

Big Tex Hospitality Management Advisors · Updated 2026-10-17 · Reviewed by Ryan NeGron, former hotel GM and VP of Operational Management. General information, not legal or financial advice.

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• What is fractional hotel management?
• Hotel asset management vs. hotel management: what owners need to know
• Alternatives to a hotel management company for independent owners
• What a hotel management agreement really costs
• Twelve questions to ask before you sign a management agreement

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