Revenue management is an art, and like all art it’s a constantly evolving process that can never be mastered. In this area of ever-changing elements, such as customer behavior trends and the continual march of technological advances, even the most experienced revenue manager must keep learning.
“Revenue management is moving target,” said Don Urbahn, VP of revenue management with New Castle Hotels & Resorts. But there are ways to ensure the revenue manager at your hotel is doing the best work possible, all the time.
#1: Create Good Habits
You must work to have a daily routine that makes sense to you, and then stick to it. “For our team, it comes back to habit. You have to build the right habit for the daily routine,” said Isaac Rodriguez, VP of revenue strategy & distribution with Twenty Four Seven Hotels.
Rodriguez said operators need to create a pattern for the week to help orient revenue managers. For example, Rodriguez looks at certain reports on Mondays, then enacts a plan and goes back on Thursday to assess the success of that plan.
#2: Understand the Data
To find success here, Rodriguez stresses the main objective is to look at available data and understand what is truly relevant and what’s extraneous. “The big objective is figuring out what is truly important and makes the difference,” he said, noting it’s an exercise of finding what he calls the “root story” in the data. That story is one revealing the true nature of market demand, not what you think demand might be. “The amount of data coming through because of the recent advent of automation can be overwhelming. But if you set the right habit to look at X metrics, and then make decisions based on those it defines the difference between a revenue manager and someone simply filling the role.
