Laura Elkin - National Sales Director, Tour and Travel

Laura has 18 years experience in hospitality sales and marketing.  As Crescent’s National Sales Director for Tour & Travel, Laura is responsible for developing and implementing a national and international tourism presence for Crescent Hotels & Resorts portfolio.  Laura works with the Crescent hotels directly to evaluate and attend industry tradeshows with the objective to build relationships and secure national programs with existing and new accounts.  She leads the implementation for individual hotels to promote themselves via familiarization trips, road trip sales calls, Journalist visits, customer partnering, customer events and other innovative methods for customer relationship building.

Laura has operational experience in launching successful new hotel openings and conversions. While specializing in tourism, Laura has also successfully implemented programming for youth, amateur and collegiate sports, religious, association and multicultural segments.   Laura additionally has a strong background in senior, adult, sports, Black history and religious travel segments. Most recently, Laura developed a regional tourism program for Marriott International, most of which is now being used on a national basis.    

Laura holds a Bachelor of Arts in Advertising from Michigan State University where she won regional awards for campus programming. Laura held a Board of Trustee position for a local outreach center from 2001 to 2008.  She holds Marriott Certifications for all Affinity Sales including Sports, Multi Cultural, Fraternal, Religious and Wholesale segments.  She has served on multiple Motorcoach Task Forces for her city, state and region.  She is currently an active member of ABA, NTA, SYTA, OMCA and Tourism Cares.  She plans to pursue a national board position and CTIS certification.