Speakers: Karen Buls, Director, Sales and Lead Management Services (SLMS). Karen Buls, Director of Sales and Lead Management Services
Karen Buls: Hi, I'm Karen Buls Director of Sales and Lead Management Services in the RMCC Americas. My team is responsible for driving faster response time and higher conversion for our hotel property partners and we do this by ensuring that they do not miss a single piece of group business. We are either the sales team for hotel partners who do not have a sales team or the extension of a sales team for hotel partners who do have a team, but just need that little extra lift. I came to Hilton just over a year ago after spending over two decades in the airline industry in several leadership positions across the commercial organization, learning everything that I could possibly learn to land my dream job that I have today. Now, you might wonder, where are you speaking from? So, one of the ways that I thrive in the travel industry, of course, is traveling. The other way that I thrive outside of work is by investing in my children. And this week, I'm dropping off my daughter at Iowa State University for the fall semester and I'm really excited to be here. You can probably tell that people have been walking around this Zodiac sign and the reason they're doing that is because it's a tradition here at Iowa State that you do not walk across the sign. If you do, it could be very bad luck and you could miss your goals. Well, Sales and LMS has a very aggressive goal this year. We need to grow our portfolio by 150 hotel property partners. So I am definitely going to avoid the Zodiac.
Can you share a recent project or accomplishment that you're particularly proud of?
Karen Buls: I walked from Memorial Union to the Innovation Center to talk about my favorite project because it required a ton of creativity and flexibility from myself, the leaders within my team and all of our supporters who contributed from the RMCC. The Sales and Lead Management Services team is mighty, but we simply were not set up to grow. And we had a lot of hotel property partners who wanted in, but we just couldn't support them. So we took a look at the two service models that we had to meet the needs of various hotel brands with different complexities and different needs and we realized that it wasn't sufficient. So we spent from May of last year all the way through to December of last year understanding our portfolio, understanding those unique needs and designing new service models. And so we designed the new models, we flipped the switch in January of this year and now we have a whole menu of service offerings that we can allow our hotel property partners to take advantage of as they seek to again, maximize their conversion by increasing their response time. So if you happen to know a hotel property partner who needs a little bit of help capturing those group leads, please think of us.
Tell us about your career journey leading up to your current role.
Karen Buls: I thought it would be fun to come to the Department of Aerospace Engineering to talk about my career journey because I spent over two decades working for American Airlines and learned so much about the travel industry and gained so many skills that helped me land my dream job at Hilton. Of all of the leadership roles that I held across the commercial organization, I would say the ones that most prepared me for my current role were the role of Director of Global Marketing Strategy, the role of New Business Development, and the role of Strategic Accounts Director. Those roles taught me about communication, supporting a sales organization in a marketing environment, strategy and planning, sales, of course, and the critical role of understanding how to use your network across the travel industry to basically carry out your vision and achieve your goals.
How does your current role fit in to your career goals?
Karen Buls: My current role is an incredible opportunity to develop my career because I work with a very talented team who's incredibly knowledgeable and I have an amazing network of supporters across the RMCC. Because Sales and Lead Management Services can help so many different hotel property partners and can interrelate with so many groups that support our hotel property partners, I'm also getting to interact with a lot of leaders from other organizations from whom I'm sure I will continue to learn and will for sure, lead to incredible growth.
What advice would you give to someone who is interested in pursuing a similar career path?
Karen Buls: For someone who's looking to pursue a similar path to my career path, what I would recommend is stay curious. Experience many different areas of the business. Get your experience in Sales and Marketing and Communications and Strategy and Loyalty, work with Systems Technology and truly be fearless, be brave and test yourself and test what you may or may not like across all of these different disciplines. The other piece of advice that I would give is to build a very strong network of supporters in every group where you work. You're going to meet people who will become your champions as long as you are spreading the light and warmth of hospitality and truly doing the work that needs to be done to meet the vision. The third piece of advice that I would give is just don't ever stop. If you go somewhere and you find that you took a wrong turn, just turn around and go do something different, but don't ever give up just because of a poor experience. You can always reinvent yourself and start over.
