Marketing interview prep.

Behavioural questions to expect

1. Walk me through your CV.
2. Walk me through your most impressive campaign, demand-recovery programme, or marketing-led commercial decision.
3. Tell me about a weakness, a failure, or feedback you've received and worked on.
4. Why a property marketing seat — and why hospitality specifically?
5. Why the sector — what's your point of view on this asset type and this market from a marketing lens?
6. Why the firm?
7. What's your read on the firm's brand story and how it shows up across the booking funnel?
8. If you had the firm's last-12-month channel mix in front of you, walk me through how you'd diagnose direct vs. OTA vs. metasearch vs. wholesale.

Technical concepts to master

• Brand storytelling at the property level — codes, content, and consistency

  Property positioning sentence · Property codes — hero assets · Content calendar + storytelling cadence · OTA storefront stewardship

• Channel + booking-funnel mechanics — where conversion is won + lost

  Brand-search defence + paid search · Metasearch + price-parity discipline · Brand.com property page + booking engine · Retargeting + abandonment recovery

• Loyalty + CRM + segmentation — the relationship engine

  Loyalty room-night contribution · Lifecycle automation · Top-tier retention · CRM segmentation + personalisation

• Campaign-to-commercial measurement — attribution + contribution discipline

  Campaign attribution model · Incrementality testing · Brand vs. performance budget split · RevPAR contribution + GOPPAR flow-through

Practical drills

• Your property's channel mix last quarter: direct (brand.com + loyalty + voice) 52% at $235 ADR with $11 effective COCA, OTA 33% at $205 ADR with 17% commission load, metasearch 9% at $228 ADR with $14 effective COCA, wholesale 6% at $185 ADR with 22% net discount. Loyalty member share is 38%. Walk me through: (a) the COCA-net-of-loyalty by channel, (b) whether the brand.com or metasearch dollar is the better marginal channel right now, and (c) the implication for the next $300K of paid spend.
• You are the Director of Marketing at a 280-key upper-upscale urban transient property. Corporate transient is down 18% year-on-year for Q1; leisure transient is flat; group on the books is at 71% pace vs. 84% same-time-last-year. RGI is 96 (was 102 last Q1). Property leadership wants a multi-channel demand-recovery campaign in market within 30 days. Walk me through the campaign design.
• You are taking over marketing for the firm. Last year: OTA share 38%, direct share 47% (loyalty 31%), metasearch 9%, wholesale 6%. RevPAR $182 (RGI 99), GOPPAR $98. Property leadership wants direct share at 55% by month 18 without losing total RevPAR. Walk me through your 18-month plan.

Smart-question anchors

• Brand storytelling + property codes — how the property's narrative shows up across brand.com, OTA storefront, on-property, and post-stay
• Direct-channel-shift posture — current direct vs. OTA mix, loyalty contribution trajectory, and the brand-versus-paid-OTA budget split
• Loyalty + CRM maturity — lifecycle automation, top-tier retention programme, member-share targets by segment
• Commercial cadence — how the marketer, general manager, DORM, DOSM, and brand / regional team work together on weekly performance, monthly campaign, and quarterly brand reviews
• MarTech stack + measurement — attribution model, incrementality testing, CRM + CDP + booking-engine integration, reporting cadence

Sourced from

STR (CoStar Hospitality) — segmentation + channel benchmarking publications · HSMAI (Hotel Sales and Marketing Association International) — marketing + commercial publications · Skift + Phocuswright distribution + traveller-research reports · Kalibri Labs + Sojern direct-vs-OTA + traveller-intent studies · Cornell Centre for Hospitality Research — marketing + loyalty publications · Glassdoor + Hospitality Careers Director of Marketing / DOSM interview threads