John Saiki graduated from Kansas State University with a bachelor’s degree in hospitality management in 2018. He started my career working as a group housing coordinator at the Weston Crown Center in Kansas City, MO. After about 9 months, he took a promotion as a Revenue Manager at the W hotel in West Beverly Hills, CA, where he worked closely with the hotel’s Director of Revenue Management to optimize revenue and profitability by strategically managing pricing and inventory.
After 10 months with the organization, John found an opportunity within the cruise line industry, and accepted a position as a revenue analyst for Royal Caribbean International in Miami, FL. Here, he had a similar role within revenue management but for cruise ships. The ships he managed were the Radiance of the Seas, sailing between Alaska and Canada, and the Brilliance of the Seas, sailing in the Caribbean and Royal’s private island resort Perfect Day at CocoCay. Along with the cruise ship in Alaska, John also managed pricing and inventory for the land tours in Alaska, working with third-party vendors.
Unfortunately, COVID hit the globe while John was in this position, and he decided to move back to Kansas City after the cruise line industry suffered from the pandemic. He took a role in the interim as a revenue analyst within the trucking industry at Yellow Freight. Once the hospitality industry began to show life after the pandemic, John began looking for roles within the hospitality industry. He accepted a role at his current organization, Evolve Vacation Rental, as a pricing analyst. In this role, John was tasked with pricing listings within their respective markets, ensuring that listings were competitive and optimizing revenue within their first year of signing up with Evolve. After a year, John was promoted to his current role as a Portfolio Revenue Manager. In this role, he manages pricing and revenue strategy for a little over 3,500 properties within the Southeast region of the U.S.