On the way to hospitality industry recovery, we will probably still in 2021 witness many twists and turns.
NB: This is an article from YieldPlanet
Opening and closing borders, loosening and tightening local restrictions, limiting guests in accommodation properties, keeping restaurants closed and serving takeaways only, limiting access to main attractions, requiring immunity passports etc. How to operate in such uncertain and difficult to predict conditions? How to prepare your property to new market condition adoption?
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Channel Manager is a tool which will help you in managing your property efficiently on the way to full recovery and adapting quickly to new market conditions. Now, more than ever before, you need a tool offering you great flexibility in starting or stopping sales, modifying rates or opening and managing only selected channels instead of all of them. With a right revenue management strategy and a tool that helps you automate the most of the task you will be able to act fast and adopt your business to a fast-paced environment.
What you should take into consideration on your road to recovery?
#1 Pricing flexibility is super important now – use grids functionality
For such unpredictable times we have now you should choose the right pricing strategy and have an option to change it easily and quickly when needed. And here comes the grids functionality that allows you freely and within a few seconds reload prices. Think in advance of possible price options at your property, introduce up to 30 ready price lists and change them in seconds whenever you need it. Current fast-paced environment might not give you much time to think how to react to changing market conditions. You need to be prepared and act really quick.
While working on a new pricing strategy have in mind that some of your services can be closed (e.g. restaurants, gym, spa) – adjust your prices accordingly or think about other values you can provide instead. Of course you can decrease prices in the hope of stimulating demand, but this may not be the best idea, especially if it comes to your property brand image. Think instead about targeting the new customer groups – those who are ready and able to travel at a given time. The right move will be also making the whole booking process as flexible as possible. This should influence booking decisions of your potential guests.
#2 Use the Channel Manager to open, block or restrict sale in selected periods
Having a reliable Channel Manager is now more important than ever before. Restrictions are now starting to ease but every time they may be tightened back again, thus you need to be prepared for every single scenario – bookings increase and wave of cancellations, restrictions easing and imposing new ones. To handle these you require a tool that allows you to easily manage the whole booking process and sales in all channels.
In case not all channels should be made available during certain periods switch to managing availability per channel. Be ready for the reloading system fast when demand is back. Having such a support in Channel Manager you can also think about testing new channels and attracting new groups of customers. In such a difficult time for your business you can’t rely on a few distribution channels only.
#3 Introduce automation to manage guest limits in your property with revenue rules
In difficult pandemic times you need to be prepared for adopting in a timely manner all newly imposed restrictions to stop spreading the virus. Thus there may be a need to temporarily close the hotel and cancel all reservations within a few days only or adhere all the bookings to the current guests limit.
This makes managing your reservations more difficult than ever before and really time consuming if done without proper software. Here also a good Channel Manager will give you a helpful hand. How? By allowing you to manage guest limits in your hotel with revenue rules. You don’t need to do anything manually and monitor the number of bookings all the time. Set up a proper rule and be sure you won’t welcome more guests than allowed in given time.
