Sandy Schwab

Sandy Schwab

With more than 15 years’ worth of experience in sales and marketing, Sandy A. Schwab is an expert in the luxury hospitality industry. Over the years of building her career, Sandy has been involved in making significant changes in various luxury hotel establishments. For almost a decade, Sandy has been working at senior positions in ELITE Luxury Hospitality Representation in New York, the United States of America.

The core focus of her function in the positions she’s held has been to assist hotels to grow with tactful marketing and sales strategies. She began her career in this competitive industry as an event organizer and eventually rose to the position of Vice President of Sales & Marketing. Her mastery in the industry and acumen for all aspects of marketing has credited Sandy a strong market position as a professional.

Her keenness for bringing big luxury hotels more business, she created strategies that changed trajectories for them. From the beginning of her career to this very moment, Sandy has spent time nurturing and building her expertise to offer the best services. Her enthusiasm, eagerness to learn, and dedication have carried her over to be regarded as a well-respected expert in the sales and marketing field. During her time as a student, Sandy completed her Associate of Business Administration from Delgado College, New Orleans, Louisiana in 1992. After completing this degree, Sandy wanted to continue her education and enrolled at Loyola University in 1992 to get her Bachelor of Business Management.

Her curiosity for management and the business side of operations prompted Sandy to dive deeper and get this degree. During this time, she dedicated her time and efforts to learn the theoretical aspects of marketing and sales. What she learned during this time gave Sandy the backbone to innovate and strategize solutions for luxury hotels later on in her career.

After getting her foot in the industry as a professional, Sandy became a member of MAPTA. MAPTA or the Metropolitan Area Professional Travel Association is a non-profit that works to keep members educated of the changes in the industry. Since there is much to learn from the trade shows MAPTA put on, Sandy remains an active member to this day since 2000.

As a professional in the industry, Sandy has had an impressive and stable career in marketing and sales. Her curiosity in the hospitality industry gave her the motivation to begin her career. She got her big breakthrough when she joined Elite Sales and Marketing in New York as a Hotel Events Coordinator in 2006. She spent a year in this position, leading the sales and marketing of events for luxury hotels located in the US and Europe.

During her time as a coordinator, Sandy was tasked to liaise between agents and hotels, while ensuring excellent customer service and conducting meetings. Apart from the day-to-day liaison, Sandy was also responsible for coordinating events which involved marketing it to hundreds of potential attendees. Besides management and working under stress, this experience instilled the value of customer service. Having to deal with a huge number of people at the same time and solving queries added customer service skills to Sandy’s arsenal. It also helped her build her hospitality ethics.

The growth in her skills and newfound respect as a professional in the industry led to new opportunities. She then joined one of the most luxurious hotels, the Waldorf-Astoria as Business Development Manager. As the title of the position explains, Sandy was responsible to generate new corporate leads for the hotel. Her experience in customer handling and coordinating high-stake events proved of much help. She was able to successfully dig into resources with no connections with the hotel and then create new business opportunities. Doing so with meticulous planning, she was also able to contribute to overall group sales and exceed revenue goals for the Waldorf-Astoria.

During her tenure at the hotel, Sandy identified the stay patterns of well-paying clients. This helps her create a focus on targeting them during need periods. Sandy knew that there lie even more opportunities in the market, so she conducted research and developed comprehensive reports on market needs. She then optimized these efforts by extracting DMPE contacts to determine business opportunities. Her previous success in creating lucrative business opportunities and improving sales at Waldorf worked in her favor. After a year of service at the Waldorf-Astoria, Sandy joined Elite International Luxury Hotels Representation in 2008 as Director of Sales. Sandy spent the next four years leading sales and marketing programs for luxury hotels located in the US and Europe.

Back then, one of the greatest challenges that she had to face was handling international clients. But having an extensive career in marketing had prepared her to do the tasks well. As the Director, Sandy oversaw the entire marketing and sales strategy pan out from conception to implementation. Her main goal was to achieve corporate goals. Her excellence in this area of work bumped her up to the position of Vice President of Sales and Marketing in the same firm. Her job now includes providing leadership and coordinating the company’s marketing and sales efforts for all clients.

A significant part of her job is to maintain communication, oversee strategy implementation and direct sales forecasting activities, sales and marketing teams, and execution of plans. Along with that, she took on the task of representing the company at trade association meetings, meeting with key clients, and controlling expenditures. Collectively, she is responsible for making sure that no client goes underserviced or is dealt an ineffective strategy. She ensures that operations run smoothly. During this time at Elite as both VP and Director, Sandy was responsible for bringing life to various marketing and sales strategies.

Some of the highlights in these efforts include the 5-star and luxurious Beaumont Hotel in London, England. From basic marketing and sales initiatives to revitalization of their brand as a luxury hotel, all are credited to Sandy’s expertise. The results showed in the form of the hotel receiving Virtuoso status within a year and a new 73-room property built in Mayfair. This is an example of other similar instances. Amongst them is the 51 Buckingham Gate. Sandy formulated strategies that brought dramatic differences in the hotel’s rebranding from 3-star to 5-star. Another example is the Shangri-La Hotel in London, which she was able to reposition. She got to the hotel in time after an unsuccessful launch and assisted in a complete rebranding.

All of these examples and many others are an ode to Sandy’s professionalism, creative thinking, and prowess in the fields of marketing and sales. Hence, she is currently VP of the department, handling daily operations to create successful results for the clients and the company.