Susan Barry

Commercial Strategy


Atlanta, Georgia, United States
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Helping hotel owners achieve superior top line revenue performance through sales, marketing, and revenue strategy consulting, retainer engagements, and projects.

Key Consulting Services

  • Top line revenue growth.
  • Optimizing sales, marketing, and revenue strategy.
  • Price positioning.
  • Brand messaging from print to social.
  • Online reputation improvement.

Expertise

As President and Queen Bee of Hive Marketing, Susan helps hotel owners, management companies, and brands optimize top line revenue performance by deploying 25 years of award-winning experience in sales, marketing, and revenue strategy. Hive has worked with more than 150 hotels in 75 markets and five countries to solve top line revenue problems, resulting in millions of dollars in incremental revenue and profitable asset dispositions for owners. From short-term deep dives into price positioning, target account identification, and branding; to long-term engagements in fractional asset management for hotel portfolios, Susan believes that advice without action is useless. Projects include hotel transition sales assessments; recession-readiness audits; market supply and demand analyses; vacation rental studies; and brand messaging ideation and deployment.

Background

Key Experience

  • Susan has led Hive Marketing as President and Queen Bee for 11 years. Prior to founding Hive in 2009, Susan led the sales, marketing, and revenue disciplines in several new build openings over ten years with Starwood in Denver, CO; the DC market; and Atlanta, GA, winning Starwood's "Hotel of the Year" and helping reimagine the Westin brand along the way. After two highly-successful openings in three years, Susan envisioned a consultancy that would allow hotel owners to access the expertise of long-time hoteliers combined with the speed, efficiency, and tech-forward approach of independent contractors -- and Hive was born. Susan spent several years as an off-premise caterer before embarking on her hotel career, and she can safely confirm that hotels are much more fun.

Professional & Other

Susan is a graduate of Florida State University, where she majored in thinking she would become a novelist before falling in love with the hospitality industry. Susan is a founding board member of She Has a Deal, a first-of-its-kind hotel investment pitch competition for early career women, and participated in the Castell Project's 2019 Cohort. Susan co-hosts the Omnicast, a podcast for leaders who want to grow their businesses, and is a frequent panelist and speaker at hotel industry conferences and events.

Industry Associations

Susan's Latest Articles & Case Studies

Susan Barry Joseph Cozza

Cayuga Hospitality Consultants Discuss Future of Events

By Susan Barry & Joseph Cozza Jan 19, 2023

Cayuga Hospitality Consultants got together with other members to talk about their area of expertise, projects, and work as well as current...

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Susan Barry

Stress Test Before You Invest: Hotel Demand

By Susan Barry Jan 19, 2023

The pandemic has created challenges for hotel owners like none they have ever seen.  STR reports that U.S. hotel profits fell almost...

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Susan Barry

Stress Test Before You Invest: Hotel Supply

By Susan Barry Jan 19, 2023

For better or worse, the decimation of the hospitality industry as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has piqued the interest of...

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