Tenille Perry, director of sales and marketing at The Kimpton Sylvan Hotel in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood, journeyed from Canada to Georgia to find her niche in hospitality.
Perry was born and raised in Toronto. While considering possible career paths in high school, she told her guidance counselor that she enjoyed numbers and data analysis, but also wanted to work closely with other people. The counselor suggested hospitality as a way to experience the best of both worlds. At Toronto’s Ryerson University, she earned her bachelor of commerce degree in hospitality and tourism management, graduating in 2004.
As a student, she tended bar and waited on tables at the Four Seasons in Toronto and quickly found that luxury hotels could be both fun and lucrative. She remained with the hotel and rose up to become catering coordinator and restaurant supervisor, but eventually decided to transition to a division with a more steady schedule. Securing a J-1 visa, Perry moved to Georgia to be the food and beverage department head at the Hilton Atlanta Airport hotel. “It was only supposed to be for a year and a half,” she recalled, but after six months, the area regional VP of sales and marketing asked her to stay on and she ultimately spent seven and a half years at Hilton hotels. She returned home for two years in 2007 to oversee meetings and catering at the Hilton Toronto but went back to Atlanta in 2010 as a senior sales manager.
“My experience and background in food and beverage really lends itself to my success in sales, because I understand what it means to be in operations,” she said. “I understand what they are going through. So when we sell an event or we talk about an event with a potential client, we ... always consider how it's going to be executed and the people that are responsible for executing it.”
After her first stint at Hilton properties, Perry joined Island Hospitality Management as director of sales for the Residence Inn Atlanta Downtown. After building a reputation for team building and problem solving, Perry was recruited to move to a variety of different Georgia properties. She joined the Hilton Garden Inn Atlanta Downtown as director of sales for, and then continued on as director of sales and marketing for both the Hilton Garden Inn and Hampton Inn & Suites in Savannah, Ga. After a year, she joined The Ellis Hotel, part of Marriott International's Tribute Portfolio, as director of sales and marketing, and joined Hotel Equities in the same role at The Hamilton (Alpharetta) in November 2020, where she remained until joining the Kimpton Sylvan in March.
Lessons Learned
Perry has found benefits in taking more time to build a presence at a hotel. For the first year in a job, she said, a manager spends a lot of time executing the strategies and standard operating procedures that were put in place by a predecessor. “Everything that you start to put in place really starts to grow legs in the month after you start, and it really starts to show within the next year,” she said.
The best part of her job, Perry said, is growing a team and making sure everyone on it feels like a vital part of a greater whole. “They want to be successful not just because they want to hit their own personal numbers,” she said. Instead, these connected team members want the hotel and everyone who works there to do well. “And I have been able to build some killer teams in the past,” she said. Her own teams interact with other departments and help build a tight community within the property. “The beauty of working in a hotel is that even if you're in one department, you cannot be successful without touching all the other departments,” she said.
Working in sales creates a different experience every day, Perry said, both with clients and with her team members. “We put strategies in place and when you start to see them come to fruition that's very exciting for me,” she said. “But I never miss an opportunity to say hello to a guest and to get out there and shake someone's hand and thank them for choosing our hotel.”
Tenille Perry's...
Challenge
When she started at one particular hotel, Perry found herself alone with no team to work with. “There were a lot of things that were under my umbrella that I had to take care of, and at the time I felt defeated,” she recalled.
Success
Perry turned to her family for comfort, and her father offered some words of wisdom: “What seems like it's unfair to you now is just an opportunity for growth. It's how you look at it. You have to look at it in a different light.” She decided to view the challenge as a chance to build a new foundation for the department, recruiting new talent and networking at industry events: “And it ended up being better than before I even got there.”
Advice
“Enjoy your time with your guests. People will buy from people that make them smile. It's an old adage—people buy from people they like. It's not new, but it is so true.”
Secrets to Success
Find a mentor. “Identify someone—whether you go to LinkedIn or at an industry event—someone that you really admire. That becomes very handy on those days where it doesn't feel worth it.”
Remember the Golden Rule: “Treat people how you would like to be treated yourself ... It's just integrity. And what ends up happening is when you treat people with that level of respect, you get it back and it comes back to you in a lot of ways that are important in the future.”
Keep learning and growing: “Learn what you can, grow when you can and celebrate your successes.”