For most hoteliers, every Wednesday is STR Report Day and for them, that day is like Christmas morning–only that it comes 52 times, while Santa comes just once a year.
NB: This is an article from Milestone
That is the day that everyone learns whether they were “naughty or nice” that week. Did they deploy the right type of pricing strategy? Manage the right channels? Sold the right groups at the right rate? Took in the right amount of corporate business? Were they correct in their decision to turn away that staffing crew? Did they win the week and out-perform their competitors in their market? It is their chance to peak into the stockings of the hotel across the street, or around the corner to see if they got something more or did something better.
The Smith Travel Research (STR) Report is arguably the single most important source of business analytics utilized by all decision makers in the hospitality industry. Much attention is paid to this report and the impact that it has on the operations of a hotel; often to the detriment of other business analytics. If one were to ask any general manager or director of sales at a hotel their RevPAR index for last week, most could readily quote it out in response. However, if you were to ask them the channel contribution mix that impacted that ADR Index or the conversion rate which impacted their occupancy index, they would have no idea.
Despite the flood of data that is becoming available to hoteliers and hotel operators, the familiarity and clarity of each metric’s value and understanding how to positively impact the results is low. Most have decided on to focus on one source of performance authority. Understandably, the STR report has been that source. It is the great market equalizer and a valuable tool. However, like most tools, its ability to accomplish all tasks is limited. Those who can bridge the gaps between tools are often the most successful.
Taking the First Step to SEO RockSTRdom
Hotel teams that want to achieve their weekly STR goals need to understand how their SEO analytics are signs of whether they are on the right track or if there is more that can be done to achieve “rockSTR” status.
The collaboration of reviewing STR Analytics and Google Analytics are ways in which a property will be able to achieve greater profitability. For example, take demand. In the STR Report, hoteliers are provided the change in demand (which is defined in this case as the number of hotel rooms) for the previous week. By comparison, digital marketers comparable metric is Google Trends, which measures the change in interest in a search term over time.
One metric shows how many are looking to buy, while the other shows how many actually bought. One can see that these each have two pieces of the same puzzle, but when viewed separately can almost tell totally different stories. For example, the online interest levels for most travel-related key terms is returning to pre-covid levels. This would give the impression recovery is well on its way. Now, contrast that to the metric that shows continually low occupancy rates for most global markets, the story becomes that most travelers are still in the “dreaming” or “window shopping” phase, not making a purchase, and the industry still is struggling.
