It’s generally recognised that the hotel manager is responsible for looking after guests once they step through the front door. They’re not responsible for increasing the number of guests in the first place. Managing and promotion are two very different tasks.
A job description sent my way this week listed targets for a community manager to quadruple the number of community visitors in a year.
For sure, you can have some influence over the number of visitors. But, overwhelmingly, the biggest sources of growth are likely to come from channels over which you may have little direct influence (no. customers with questions, no. visitors to your brand website, promotion of the community by the brand to its audience etc…).
Job descriptions like these seem to be setting the community manager up to fail. In my experience, it often happens when someone wants to saddle a new hire with an extreme target from a senior level.
The reality is if you want 4x the visitors, you’re going to need 4x the promotion you’re getting today. If that’s not on the table, walk away from the table.
