If you aren’t lucky enough to have a Revenue Management System then here is our easy to follow guide on what you should be considering every day…
NB: This is an article from Right Revenue
- Review last night. How did you end up compared to how you believed you were going to perform? More or less rooms? Do you need to bill for no-shows? What rate was offered to your walk-ins?
- Future business change. Did you see a spike in the last 24 hours for future dates that might alert you to perhaps an event or group booking? Will this change your rate strategy for that dates and the dates before or after?
- Future business change. Was there a significant loss of business on future dates that may alert to mass cancellation which might trigger a change in rate.
- Check your position on brand.com. If not interfaced, do you have enough availability online for the next month and the right rate strategy?
- Brand.com is a great place to start to see spikes in demand or a change in buyer behaviour. What dates are seeing more searches than others? What are your conversion rates? Will this adjust your strategy?
- Check your overall rate strategy for the coming 14 days (perhaps longer depending on your own pick-up trends). Do you need to adjust your strategy in line with forecast and demand?
- Never under-estimate the ‘power of packages’. These are a great way to opaque a lower room rate, without showing heavily discounted rates. Do you need to launch offers for dip dates without devaluing your rate strategy?
- Check your on-the-day rates. Do you need to review your strategy for today?
- Check your forecast for the next 3 months rolling. If not using an RM system, do you need to adjust? Be realistic.
- Review all groups (many of you will still have weddings or family gatherings) for the next 3 months rolling. What rooms are being held? When are the release dates? Are you holding an unrealistic amount of rooms? Check the pick-up and be honest.
- What do you have to upsell for tonight and what target will you put in place for the team? Eg €20.00 room upgrade or booking X in the restaurant.
- Complete your competitor check for the next 21 days. Who is changing rate? Where do you realistically sit on pricing? But always remember not to ‘follow’. Don’t change your strategy just because your competitor has. You don’t want to react to a bad decision that they are making. Make sure your ‘own house’ is in order first.
- Check overall demand for your area but more specifically for your true comp set. If the city has demand of anything over 75% then this may well be a useful trigger to move rate. Anything less may be an indicator to hold.
- Make sure your individual rates are in line with your overall strategy. As an example: you may wish to keep your BAR rates higher and decrease packages to make those look more attractive. Or perhaps keep standard rooms higher and reduce suites to try and pick-up booking pace on these room types.
- Check all data input in the last 24 hours to make sure that all data is clean and that your team are making good choices when it comes to data input. Poor data in means poor data out and no-one can make great decisions with poor data to start from!
- Are there any new companies that can be passed to Sales for leads?
- Review news feeds for events so that you can adjust a strategy and remember, there may be an event being held at a competitor. You may not be a lead hotel but you may well pick-up washed demand from that property. You may also wish to check-out www.eventseye.com which collates major events in key locations. Be ready for future dates and adjust your strategy now!
- Be aware of new feeder markets and markets that recover sooner. D-Edge have a great free tool to use, as do SiteMinder – https://www.d-edge.com/hospitality-recovery-tracker/ or https://www.siteminder.com/world-hotel-index/data/ – avail of any free tools that are can.
- Review your OTA’s. Do you have too much inventory online? Can you restrict? Or do you need to open availability? Review for the next 3 weeks as a minimum.
- Review your OTA pricing and make sure that you are not being undercut. The meta sites are a good indicator of pricing and if any site is misbehaving!
- Who do you have in-house tonight? Any VIP’s? Anything that you need to alert house-keeping to?
- Check your arrivals, departures and in-house status and make sure that house-keeping are with you on what needs to be done.
- Check your reviews on TripAdvisor/Booking/Social Media. Does anything need actioned immediately?
- Check any notes on the handover. Is there something you or management need to re-act to? Anything operational that needs to be considered and may have an effect on your strategy?
- Have a coffee! You deserve it!
Above all, remember that a 10% drop in rate can take at least 3 years to recover from. Have a ‘stay strong revenue strategy’ and for goodness sake, please look at the tools that can help you do a better job – a great Revenue Management system is a great place to start.
