Influential Woman · Hospitality

Zoey Pace

Senior Account Manager – Cirque du Soleil, Road Rebel Global

Richmond, VA

Her Story

About Zoey

I've been working in hospitality for about 8 years, and I absolutely love it. A lot of people think it's not a great job, but I love people and I love building relationships with them. When you're working in hospitality, you get to be part of their experience in a way that can really make or break it. I remember when I go to a hotel and the people there are phenomenal - I remember that hotel stay years down the line. Currently, I work in travel hospitality, sourcing hotels for my different clients who are going on tour. I negotiate contracts, handle high-level conflict resolution for issues that come up during negotiations or when my clients are staying at different properties. I do a lot of client relationship building because I find that when you have a really good relationship with a vendor or client and you've established that trust with them, they know that you deeply care about them and you're on their side no matter what. Even if you run into an issue that can't be solved or you make a mistake, if you have that basis already with them, they are a lot more understanding and forgiving because they know that at the end of the day, you're with them for them.

Her Interview

Ten minutes with Zoey

01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?

The best career advice I've ever received is to over-communicate always, always, always. Even if you think it's a stupid update or you're like, it's not really even explaining anything, over-communication will solve so many problems. Even just telling the client, hey, I'm working on this, I still don't have an update, but I want you to know that it's still on my radar - it will go so far versus just not saying anything until you have some sort of update or resolution on an issue. Same with your colleagues - I always try to over-communicate as much as possible so that no one feels lost, no one feels confused, no one feels like they don't have an idea of what's going on or what the tools that they need to succeed.

02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?

Don't sell yourself short. I feel like as a woman, I'm very guilty of this as well. I'll see things and go, like, oh, I don't know if I can do that, oh, I don't know if I have the skill set for that, but men don't do the same thing. They apply for stuff, they contribute, they're, you know - I think that we as women have this idea that we have to know everything perfectly in order to have an opinion, or we have to be perfectly prepared for something to try to get into it. I think that that is to our detriment, because you should just try, you know, just try. Have the audacity that a man has and see what happens.

03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?

A lot of the challenges we have right now are due to the economy, to be honest with you. Everything has become really expensive, people aren't traveling as much, which is understandable. It does put us in a hard spot because we rely on people's travel, we rely on people going places and doing things, and if they're not able to do that, then we don't have business. When the economy is not doing great, travel, hospitality, and live performances are the spaces that take the first hits, because no one's going to go on vacation if gas is crazy expensive and if they can't afford groceries. I would also say that post-COVID, the industry has changed for sure. It took a really big hit with COVID, and I don't think we ever really recovered, to be honest, in terms of how staffing happens and the level of customer service that we expected prior to COVID. COVID was so horrible and intense that it just changed everything. I think we're starting to see it kind of come back in terms of the level of customer service that I expect from hospitality leaders, but it was kind of rough for a while there.

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