Shaping hotels and hospitality for more than a century, the Swiss know how to launch and operate properties that guests want to visit again and again.

Marion Amacker, Associate Director at Morgan Philips Executive Search Switzerland is leading the Hospitality & Luxury Practice. She has been working for 20+ years within the hospitality sector and knows by heart its trends, functions and features.

During the last few weeks, she has been conducting a few assignments and hundreds of interviews for Sales & Marketing leading roles (aka DOS, DOSM) on the Swiss market and would like to share some food for thought:

Understanding local is key

Most of our clients request a good understanding of the local market. Geneva is not comparable to any other major European cities indeed. Actually only a few major events coming to the city (4 times a year), hotels do not need to yield as in other capitals,

International luxury leisure groups are vital

Most of the 5* hotels are focusing on the luxury high end groups which are back to pre-Covid figures (read the full interview of Nathalie Seiler),

Expertise is fundamental

More and more hotels split the DOSM role into two separate roles : Director of Sales- DOS- and Director of Marketing/ Communication as they consider those are different functions while it used to be a generic DOSM role. Digital transformation leads to a need of expertise on both ecommerce and social media sides. Therefore, talents needs to choose their camp, either Sales or Marketing.

It’s definitely sales that make hotels prosper; the role is key for any property so let’s make it works through relevant recruitments of key talent!

Marion Amacker
Associate Director – Morgan Philips Switzerland
marion.amacker@morganphilips.com