Hotel Marketing Department - Is Their Function to Fill the Rooms, Or Raise the Guests' Satisfaction?

If you can't fill the rooms, with both new, and especially returning guests, any other of the hotel's operations are superfluous.  With this dictum in mind, marketing had better fulfill its appointed task and scour agencies, tour operators, local businesses and organizations, for volume traffic; and the operations management, i.e., the general manager, assistants, and service staff should care about maintaining the guests' experience. That has worked for years and numerous extraordinary hotels, with enviable reputations, operate with success employing these identical programs.
I realize the prestige chains of today - Ritz Carlton, Four Seasons, Relais & Chateau, Mandarin Oriental, et al - have corporate policies for marketing; and in my opinion those policies may handcuff a creative marketing department. Today's marketing must be pro-active, using the web - SEO, PPC, BLOGS, and social networking - and oriented toward more than just groups and organizations. Realistically, the decision for a group or company to host a function at your hotel is very seldom a group one; more often it is the president/organization head, or even his/her spouse, that will most influence a location and further which hotel to book in that location. Many hotel marketers are blessed by their properties location - La Samanna in St Martin, The Ritz Carlton in Naples, and the Ritz Paris all have reputations as 5-Star Hotels - and their locations have not hurt that perception at all. Conversely, downtown Detroit, Michigan would be a tough sell to almost any group. However, if you are located in a major city the competition to keep your occupancy rate high can be daunting. Even with the many activities, restaurants, and museums located in most major U.S. and European cities, those advantages need emphasized by your own inventive marketing techniques.
Most of the premium properties do not rely on rewards programs such as Marriott and Starwood now tout. These hotels are more oriented to the frequent mid-level business traveler and these programs structured to be an incentive for people's booking on business trips, thereby gaining free advantages when they travel on pleasure, or with the family. However, the premium properties do maintain extensive computer databases on their frequent guests. Unless the arriving guest is a Tom Cruise type celebrity, these acknowledgments fall upon front desk personnel to fulfill. While this is successful in many cases, I believe your marketing should be involved in this aspect of operation. If a hotel executive greets a frequent guest, besides recognition by front desk personnel, you multiply the beneficial effect giving your marketing people an opportunity to meet directly with the guests. That meeting, along with others that may occur during the guests stay, present marketing with an opportunity to seed future visits; or perhaps book a business meeting with multiple room bookings.