Keri Brown is the Vice President of Commercial Strategy at Lights On, a company that helps independent hotels maximize revenue through expert pricing, distribution, and digital marketing strategies. Throughout her career, Keri has held senior roles at major hospitality brands, including Marriott, Hilton, and Highgate, as well as her most recent position as Area Director of Commercial Strategy at Outrigger. She is recognized as one of Hawaii's most decorated commercial strategy leaders, known for bridging the gap between operations, sales, and revenue management to drive holistic hotel performance.

Keri Brown, VP of Commercial Strategy at Lights On, breaks down how independent hotels can compete with branded properties by integrating revenue management, distribution, and digital marketing under one commercial strategy. She explains why a tech stack audit is always the first step with a new client and how OTA partnerships, done right, become a pipeline for direct bookings.

Keri spent over a decade in Hawaii hospitality before joining Lights On. At Outrigger, she led commercial strategy across the Waikiki Collection and played a central role in the $30-40M repositioning of the Waikiki Beachcomber from an IHG property to an independent brand. That project meant rebuilding rate strategy, channel mix, and brand positioning from scratch while the hotel stayed operational. She compares the commercial strategy leader's role to Tim Cook running Apple's supply chain: you may not be the public face, but nothing works without you.

The conversation gets specific about where independent hotels lose revenue. Keri talks about properties running disconnected systems where the PMS doesn't talk to the channel manager, rate updates take hours instead of minutes, and no one is tracking true cost of acquisition by channel. She argues that fixing those connections often matters more than any single pricing decision.

On OTAs, Keri is direct: they were built for independent hotels that don't have a global brand driving demand. The play is to use them for visibility, then convert those guests to direct bookings on the next stay. She also makes a case for front-desk upsell programs, pointing out that a property with 15 different room categories has real margin sitting in upgrades and add-ons that most hotels never capture because operations staff aren't trained or incentivized to sell.