This week, the news was all about revenue management. We’ve picked our top 5 pieces from the week. Below, you’ll find the 5 questions to ask when you’re developing your hotel’s pricing strategy, tips for the careful selection of your Revenue Management System and cost-effective ways to fight the direct booking wars. We’ve also thrown in our own infographic, created from our Head of Revenue Strategy’s 3 part series.
Pick your favorite piece below and get reading!
Revenue managers dedicate a big part of their day to managing hotel rates and driving profits. They are constantly analyzing data and various influencing factors to find that coveted sweet spot – and a revenue manager’s greatest reward is finding the ideal public pricing that attracts guests and boosts their organization’s bottom line.
However, what makes accomplishing this task so complex is that each hotel property is unique and therefore its revenue strategy must be too. After all, the size of a hotel’s profit margin depends largely on revenue from a great pricing strategy. It’s essential that hoteliers thoroughly evaluate pricing options to determine what’s best for their business and customers.
Today, we all live in a very fast-moving, high-tech society; and yet, our technology always seems to be disappointing us, unfortunately for hotel owners and revenue managers, the same issue applies to most revenue management systems (RMS).
Overall, most RMS just don’t work the way that hoteliers need them to.
But that doesn’t have to be the case. There are RMS technologies today that make revenue managers more effective and save them time (on eliminating all of the minutiae of manual data collection and analysis). Sounds amazing, right? So how do you know which RMS to choose when you’re shopping around for a new solution?
Here are four important factors to consider when choosing the best possible RMS for your property:
It’s been a busy year on the “book direct” front. Hotels of all sizes are facing off against established and emerging online travel agencies (OTAs) and meta sites. At the same time, lines are blurring, with OTAs continuing to expand their business services for hotels and the industry moving towards ‘meta metasearch’ (for another post). But generally, hotels are testing a wide range of strategies to win back share from OTAs, which take costly commission rates ranging from 10 to 30 percent.
Here’s 3 cost-effective strategies to drive direct bookings:
Our Head of Revenue Strategy recently completed a great 3 part series on revenue managers and data: the do’s, the dont’s, and the unexpected places revenue management is important. We recommend you check out all 3 articles, but for the busy among you, we’ve made a quick and easy infographic for you to check out instead!
In today’s digitally-dominated world, every hotel and inn is trying to do the same thing you are: stand out in an online environment where stunning visuals and compelling stories are everything. So how do you make your most profitable marketing channel, your hotel website, stand out against the competition?
Here’s how to create your own success story.