Hotelblog

Walter Stecher joined the team of Kempinski last year as the Sales & Marketing Director for the new luxury hotel-  Kempinski Hotel River Park Bratislava*****.

He gained valuable experiences from a couple of renowned exclusive hotels in Vienna where he was working as an international Sales & Marketing professional.

Now Bratislava is his new home and he is facing interesting new challenge of putting the hotel and the city on the map of international travelers.

 

Walter Stecher started his career in hospitality industry after finishing studying Tourism management & and leisure times economics at the International Management center (Krems, Austria) and at Universitat de les Illes Balears at Balearic Islands (Spain).

As a management trainee he had a chance to get to know various hotel departments, not only sales and marketing, but also reservation and front office departments in Le Méridien Grosvenor House ***** (London), Rio Paradaiso Hotel**** (Canary Islands) and famous Hotel Sacher Wien***** .

His career path lead him to another prestigious hotel - Grand Hotel Wien *****, firstly as Sales Manager, later promoted to Assistant Director of Sales & Marketing. Since 2006 he was working also on opening of THE RING, Vienna’s casual luxury hotel, which together with the Grand Hotel Wien ***** belong to the international brand JJW Hotels & Resorts Luxury Hotels. Walter Stecher as the Director of Sales & Marketing of both chain hotels in Vienna cooperated also on the strategic development of other projects in the city and the region, e.g. Hotel Palais Schwarzenberg, the first 6-star hotel in Vienna projected to open in 2011. Walter Stecher has an outstanding experience ininternational Sales & Marketing, mainly in Europe, North America and the Middle East market.

In the end of 2009 Walter Stecher moved to Slovakia and started to work as the Director of Sales & Marketing Director for the Kempinski Hotel River Park Bratislava*****.

 

 

As Walter Stecher says, the success of the hotel is in services and details: ´As a sales person I am always trying to see the hotel with the eyes of potential clients. As I am traveling a lot, I had a chance to experience various hotel and levels of service. Of course it is important to have a nice quiet room, high quality furniture, good working internet and air-conditioning, etc. but especially thanks to an outstanding service the guest can take home the long lasting experience.

 

Walter Stecher, as the head of the department, has recently built up his team of Sales & Marketing professionals for Kempinski Hotel River Park Bratislava*****. We were interested, how he is choosing the right people for the job: ´From my point of view, I mainly hire experienced people in life with the right sales attitude, opened towards new challenges and who are good team players. I think that a good team should be working for a common vision, help and support each other.´

If you are working in a hotel with international clients, you also have to be culture-sensitive: ´Every culture is expecting to be treated differently, it is also very important for the hotel not just putting every guest in the same box, but treating everybody according to their demands and needs.´

Kempinski also offers a wide range of trainings: ´It is very people-orientated company and we always say ´you are part of the Kempinski family´ and we really mean it like that.´

 

 

Walter Stecher says about his job: ´The most exciting thing in my job is getting up every day, go to work and see what the day brings. Of course there is a lot of strategy behind it, but my daily work brings a lot of challenges and unexpected situations with which you have to cope. I love the communication with people, with the team of the entire hotel, with clients and our guests. I personally like to get to know a lot of different people during the day, people from different countries; I want to be there to assist them, to support the team and to do what is the best for the client.´

As he says: ´A good sales manager should not only tell the clients what the hotel can offer, but he should try to find out what the client´s needs and expectations are.

 

A successful hotel sales & marketing should also keep up with the trends of the industry. Walter Stecher sees a great potential in e-commerce and web marketing: ´Internet became a very useful channel as an information source and a booking tool. You can easier attract a wide range of potential clients than with the usual marketing tools. But you also have to be very careful to tailor-made your activities in order to reach your selected target group.  A very good mix of using all the possible channels is essential to create awareness in order to reach the end consumers.´