All Consultants / Susan Barry
Susan Barry
Commercial Strategy
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
Industry Associations
Susan's Latest Articles & Case Studies
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...
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...
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...