KIMBERLY SWONGER

* Build and maintain strong relationships with IHG Global Business Partners, Global hotel stakeholders (owners, principal correspondents, management company staff), and travel agencies regarding the travel agent commissions program.

* Lead training sessions globally for hotels, IHG Global Sales and travel consultants to ensure thorough and lasting understanding of commission services procedures and payment processes and best practices. (50-75 hotels per yr trained)

* Develop and implement Global travel consultant aging reviews and hotel contact processes to guarantee top sales clients receive exceptional services.

* Global custom commission process, review and communication to hotels and stakeholders.

* Respond promptly to internal and external customer inquiries via calls, email and MS teams meetings related to commission services operations and other process matters, adhering to SLA guidelines. (over 75-100 per day)

* Collaborate closely with supervisors, following established protocols to resolve issues.

accurately complete a variety of commission services tasks within designated deadlines .

* Ensure compliance with company policies and consistently meet and exceed agreed-upon response tiles.

* Lead assigned projects and process improvements initiatives to enhance commission services operations.( TAC system, TACP system,

Maintain up-to-date customer records and ensure Salesforce cases are properly updated and closed within required timeline.

• Spearheaded strategic initiatives that transformed commission operations and enhanced hotel partner experiences, driving process efficiencies, operational excellence, and service improvements. (Commission Services training guide, Hotel training materials, currently working on a Hotel Global training guide for the TAC system)
• Identified operational gaps and designed innovative solutions that streamlined workflows, improved stakeholder satisfaction, and supported organizational objectives.

* Fostered a culture of continuous learning by mentoring team members and delivering training that increased operational expertise and process compliance.

• Conducted credit reviews on corporations to assess financial conditions.
• Reviewed customer financial data to ascertain level of risk involved for extending credit.
• Worked closely with both customers and sales team to reconcile accounts and oversee payment negotiation.
• Prioritized and organized tasks to efficiently accomplish service goals.
• Juggled multiple projects and tasks to ensure high quality and timely delivery.
• Team Leader and Trainer. Work directly with sales team, front office, reservations team, Directors of Finance, with debt collections, review applications for extending lines of credit for large groups and corporate events and revenue analysis for multiple account properties.
• Responsible for managing each account and with preparations of collecting data and reports for monthly credit meetings.
• Preparing "heat map" when needed for cash flow forecasting

• Property revenue management for 283 room convention center hotel.
• Responsible for developing and executing strategies to maximize revenues, REVPAR and growth.
• Analysis of market, trends and history to successfully execute revenue management yield processes, procedures and pricing.
• Analysis of market conditions, trends and performance to evaluate performance verse a defined comp set (STAR data, Bandwidth).
• Compiling period forecast (weekly, monthly, Quarterly, yearly) and annual budgeting.
• Preparing and publishing all reports for weekly revenue strategy meetings, group pickup meetings, reports on transient pace, daily detail price restrictions, STAR analysis, and sellout efficiency. Balancing of all inventory systems and restrictions including Delphi, passkey, OnQ R&I with PMS.
• Loading group blocks in all systems and setting yield restrictions to balance inventory.
• Work closely with FOM, AGM rooms and all sales and catering to maximize ADR, sellout efficiency, group patterns and overbooking.

• Embassy Suites Nashville SE, Murfreesboro - Murfreesboro, TN Responsible for monitoring multiple computer system and rooms in the hotel.
• Detailing, entering and servicing all group blocks and making adjustments as needed.
• Approving force sell on groups blocks based on availability and available pricing in line with revenue management strategies set, monitoring, updating and assisting call center/CRS.
• Update as need new information for CRS team in RevMax.
• Research guest billing disputes, complaints and customer service issues.
• Processing no shows, cancellations, commissions and advance purchase payments.
• Assisting all sale team.
• Assisting accounting department and front desk staff with check in/outs guest issues and training.
• Conducting weekly pickup group meetings to prevent slippage and maximize revenue.

• Volunteered with church and school organizations to support children.
• Directed schedule of weekly projects and activities
• Child care and family care

• Managed office/call center for booking reservations and groups.
• Responsible for ensuring customer satisfaction, handling preferred clients, working closely with city planners on achieving the best fit for groups coming into the city to maximize revenue for hotel as well as the city.
• Responsible for ensuring sellout, overbooking of 400+ room hotel.
• Worked with multiple different reservations/group computer systems for commissions, billing AR/AP setting rates based on trends, contracts with local businesses for special incentives and rates.
• Hotel forecasting for department heads to use for scheduling of team members.
• Researched billing error, preferred guest history and revenues, return groups pickup, slippage and history.

• Responsible for weekly, monthly and quarterly reports on growth, revenues & forecasting.
• Staffing and scheduling my department as well as monitoring of earned hours, approved overtime based on department budget.
• Handling all business travel, group bookings corporate rates and forecasting.
• Weekly sales meetings and monitoring of all group blocks and contracted rooms.
• Daily monitoring and balancing all rooms systems inventory, adjusting for group slippage and cancellations.
• Execute effective restriction after analysis to allow flow for room types, and length of stay patterns to maximize revenues, increase ADR.Updating SSG or MAR rates in Delphi.
• Use of three reservation/rooms computer systems.
• Coordinating all groups and individual room reservations.
• Maintenance of special reservation sites and promotions.

• Responsible for entering group bookings in all systems, monitoring and adjusting to maximize revenue.
• Meeting with group contacts and CVB representatives on billing, rates and special details.
• This was an extremely detail oriented job for a 400+ room hotel.
• Market Research for the same company.
• Processing of all end of the month reports for revenue generated by sales department and reported to corporate offices.
• Auditing sales booking recap comparing with sales contracts before being published to all departments.
• Updating or correcting as needed in Delphi.
• Tracking and reporting sales pace and goals.
• All reports generated were for the corporate offices.
• Auditing group pickup on a daily, weekly and monthly schedule and preventing slippage or lose.

• During this time I worked for various hotels in three different states.
• Duties included managing front desk staff and reservations staff, night audit, coordinating all groups' rooms and reservations, customer satisfaction and training for Asst. Director of accounting.
• Night Auditor

• Train the Trainer-Hilton Hotels-
• Star Trainer-Loews Hotels
• Revenue Management-Hilton Hotels-Dallas Texas