When it comes to using industry data and revenue technology for sustainable channel execution, management and results, hotels need to not only prioritize the right types of big data, but use it effectively to track and manage their costs and thoroughly understand their guests.
NB: This is an article from IDeaS
Organize and understand data
This step is essential to effectively help drive the decision-making process. This is also true when it comes to channel performance, in particular as it relates to channel costs. To accurately track costs, it is critical that effective best practices and standards are structured around the proper use of business coding and data collection. This ensures the available data is both accurate and suitable for digging into new channel performance opportunities.
Identify the true cost of each reservation
Yet another critical element is identifying the true cost of a reservation. The depth and breadth of charges related to a reservation are often more complex than you think. Considerations must be made for all costs involved – which may include items such as variable commissions, labor costs, marketing spend, loyalty program charges and more. Ensuring that these elements are understood, organized and tracked correctly is essential.
Drill deeper into your data
When applying big data in practice, hotel revenue management has historically focused more on its mathematical side by looking at traditional data sources (such as economic factors and historical results) to anticipate market demand. However, with the ability to drill deeper into your data to extract and analyze behavior-based facets, you’re provided with a thorough understanding of your guests.
Combine revenue management and marketing strategies
Combining these two functions allow hotels to identify the factors attracting and driving potential guests to book directly with the hotel, as well as help determine the ideal price to bring in the most revenue at the lowest costs. The use of this market intelligence data supports hotels as they plan intelligently and make more profitable decisions for their organization.
Utilize travel intent data
Travel intent data has become critical for developing a hotel’s revenue strategy. This data type uses search and booking data from thousands of online booking sites to help measure the demand a hotel can expect for future dates. Taking the insights from travel intent data, and layering it onto the traditional data sources used in forecasting, provides hotels with one of the most profitable opportunities to predict which guests are most likely to book and deploy a tailored marketing strategy to target them.
Big data won’t be sitting on the revenue management sidelines any time soon, and hotels can continue to expect new and evolving technology that will help them make the best—and most profitable—use of it.
