Expedia has set out its determination to disrupt the hotel revenue management sector with its next generation of technology for its hospitality partners.
Speaking at this week’s annual Expedia Partner Conference in Las Vegas where over 4,000 delegates have gathered mostly from hotels, Benoit Jolin, vice president global product said it has the ambition to “build a truly global revenue management tool”.
He said today only 15% of hotels on the planet rely on revenue management technology to run their properties and Expedia wanted to create a system that achieves widespread adoption.
“Let’s see if we can take our revenue management platform to the next level to make it easier and more streamlined for you to use it on a regular basis,” said Jolin.
There are existing RM systems in the market, some provided by chains like Marriott and other third party options like Rainmaker. Two years ago Expedia launched a basic ‘pricescraping’ revenue management tool called Rev+, version two of which went live in September.
Nicolas Daudin, senior director of product managing, lodging data technologies, said the new release saw adoption rates jump from thousands of users to 20,000.
But he told hotel partners taking part in an inception project to scope-out future developments for Rev+ that feedback was that the tool was complex and difficult to adopt.
“If you go back to our original goal, how are we disrupting the revenue management sector, the answer is no we are not yet,” he said.
“What we want to do from here is define what should be next, we have proved there is a need for revenue management technology. We have also proved there is a desire to get access to more market information.
