Erin Smith, CRME, CHBA
Erin Smith, CRME, CHBA, is the President and Founder of Aurelia Hospitality Consulting, a boutique advisory firm dedicated to helping hospitality and experiential travel brands design high-performing, structured sales organizations. Based in Colorado Springs, Colorado, she brings over 30 years of experience in the hospitality industry, including approximately 15 years in senior sales leadership roles. Her career has centered on guiding organizations through periods of growth, transition, and complexity, with a consistent focus on improving commercial performance through better organizational design.
Throughout her professional journey, Erin has observed a recurring challenge across hospitality companies: inconsistent sales performance driven not by lack of talent or effort, but by unclear structure, misaligned processes, and insufficient strategic alignment within sales teams. This insight led her to establish Aurelia Hospitality Consulting, where she partners with leadership teams to assess current performance, identify gaps, and implement intentional sales organization design. Her approach emphasizes clarity, accountability, and alignment across commercial functions to enable more consistent and scalable results.
Erin holds certifications as a Certified Revenue Management Expert (CRME) and Certified Hospitality Business Acumen (CHBA) through HSMAI, where she is also an active member. Her consulting methodology, including the Aurelia Sales Success Framework™, guides clients through diagnostic, design, and transformation phases to strengthen sales effectiveness. She is passionate about helping leaders create environments where teams can succeed—not through added pressure, but through intentional structure and support that drives sustainable performance.
• Certified Revenue Management Expert
• Certified Hospitality Business Acumen
• HSMAI
• Dolores Project
What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to resilience, determination, and a lifelong commitment to overcoming adversity. Growing up in a family that faced ongoing financial hardship, I learned early on the importance of perseverance and self-reliance. Rather than waiting for circumstances to change, I consistently chose to move forward, solve problems, and push through challenges. My motivation has always been rooted in breaking cycles of struggle and creating lasting financial stability for my family, ensuring a better and more secure future for all of us.
What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I’ve ever received is that pressure alone rarely produces consistent performance. Early in my career, I learned that sustained success comes less from simply working harder and more from having the right structure, support, clarity, and alignment in place. When those elements are present, I am able to perform at a higher level, make better decisions, and deliver more consistent results without unnecessary burnout.
What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Trust your experience more than you think you should. You don’t need to have everything figured out or be perfect to take the next step. Have faith in yourself and the unique value you bring, because your experiences are powerful and will guide you forward. When you trust yourself and stay open to growth, things naturally begin to fall into place.
What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
One of the biggest challenges in my field is that organizations often attribute underperformance to individuals, when in reality the root cause is frequently misaligned structure and organizational design. This can lead to ineffective solutions that don’t address the underlying issues impacting performance. The key opportunity, however, lies in implementing repeatable sales organization design and operational clarity to enable more scalable and consistent results. When done well, this approach not only strengthens performance within hospitality but can also be applied across other industries to drive sustainable growth.
What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
The values most important to me in both my work and personal life are resilience, self-reliance, and trust in lived experience. I am deeply committed to my family and motivated by the goal of creating generational security and stability. I also value supporting and empowering other women, encouraging them to trust themselves and their paths. In addition, I maintain a strong connection to nature, which helps ground me and keeps me centered in both life and leadership.