Acorn winners 2012 – Stuart Yeates
Age 29
Position Regional revenue manager - UK South, Ireland & Prague, Jurys Inn
Nominator Stephanie Gosling
Proudest career moment When I reached my current role because it happened much quicker than I could have anticipated.
Greatest inspiration All the managers I've worked with at Travelodge, IHG and Jurys Inn. Many of them have followed a similar career path to me, which has shown me what can be achieved within this industry.
Ambition Playing up front for Wigan Athletic. Seriously, it's to be either a group revenue manager or a director of revenue within the next few years. The pace with which revenue management moves suits my working style and I'm keen to build on the experience and skills I already have.
Stuart Yeates's hospitality career kicked off at Travelodge in 2006 in the new role of events analyst. He used analytical skills developed through previous roles within sporting organisations, such as the Football Association. In 2008, he took his talents to IHG, creating a revenue forecasting system that resulted in increases in accuracy from 90% to 99%. Stuart then took his skills to Jurys Inn in 2011 where he changed the culture of revenue management and introduced a suite of reports that allows performance transparency across the whole group.
Training and development is one of Stuart's key objectives and the time he has invested in revenue managers is reflected in market outperformance for the group and a £3.4m surplus on a £106m rooms revenue budget. Whether he will achieve his ambition of playing for Wigan Athletic is anyone's guess.