Pricing has always been an important aspect of any business as it plays a quintessential role in the effective running of all industries worldwide. Hotel price management, i.e., how the goods and services of any business are priced and tagged in the extremely competitive market scenario goes a long way in determining the firm’s profitability in the long run.
The hotel industry is a perfect example of the application of dynamic pricing in diverse market situations to ensure that each room is booked at the right price to the right guest, ultimately yielding profits and numbers for the hotel.
Well, multiple factors like the rise of online booking trend, the emergence of multiple channels for booking, cut-throat competition in the hospitality industry and rapidly fluctuating demand patterns has made it almost impossible for the hotel players to closely monitor the industry, competition rates, and trends manually on a day-to-day basis and accordingly make changes to their own pricing structure. Doing that would mean revenue managers totally immersed in the function of pricing, leaving no room for performing other roles.
Moreover, since the rates for the hotel rooms are quite prone to rapid changes as they are based on the ever-changing demand and availability of rooms at any particular time and location, developing the most effective pricing for your hotel could sometimes be challenging. With an upswing of all these complexities and the many limitations that manual operations may pose, automation comes to the fore as a strong rescue to the industry at a time when it is needed the most.
Data plays a vital role in such a scenario, empowering the hotels to make sound pricing decisions and develop a unique revenue strategy for their property. Undoubtedly, hotel price intelligence equips the hoteliers with all the necessary market information and supports them with robust and meaningful insights that smarten their functioning by helping them act real-time and intelligently.
What is Price Intelligence?
Price Intelligence is based on a unique automated mechanism based on intense market data crunching that identifies, analyses and outlines the pricing and revenue related data of the hotel, its competition and the industry at large, demand forecasting based on past trends. Thereby enabling hoteliers to gain a deeper and better understanding of the pricing strategy of competitors, existing trends and changes in the market forces, along with its impact on their own prices. Having the wealth of readymade information on competitor prices and industry demand and supply patterns almost instantly facilitates faster and informed decision making for hoteliers.
Real-time data, a key component of hotel price intelligence, not only includes key insights on competition rates, but also on the inventory available and various promotional activities being run by other hotels and OTAs. Information about the competitor promotional activities (any discounts, schemes, room offers, special packages, etc.) is utmost important, as it gives hoteliers a three sixty degrees view of the market, thereby highlighting opportunities and misses if any.
