The first secret to unlocking the full potential of your PMS data is to identify your business drivers. Business drivers are the key factors that impact your hotel’s revenue and profitability. This on-the-books data will make up the foundation for a large number of strategic business decisions you need to make.
NB: This is an article from Lighthouse (formerly OTA Insight)
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Here are some of the key drivers you should be able to record and find in your PMS:
- Market segment – The category of the market, grouping of rate codes, to which the reservation belongs, such as transient, group, etc.
- Rate code – The PMS rate code assigned to the reservation, such as BARBB, CORP1, etc.
- Room type – The rooms being consumed and their associated rate
- Channel – The distribution channel used to make the reservation
- Country – The country from which the guest is traveling
- Day of week stays – The days of the week for which the reservation is made
- Length of stay (LOS) – The number of room nights booked as part of the reservation
- Lead time – The amount of time in advance the reservation is made
- Company – Whether the reservation is linked to a company, potentially one you have already prospected for a negotiated rate
- Agency – The travel agent who made the reservation, such as CWT, Booking.com, etc.
Once you have identified your business drivers, you can use this information to optimize your pricing, availability, LOS, and room type strategies.
For instance, if you know that your hotel’s retail BAR-driven occupancy is higher on weekends, that’s a great opportunity to adjust your pricing strategy and bump up your rates on weekends to capture more revenue.
By pinpointing these drivers, you can also get a better sense of which guest segments are most profitable for your hotel. Maybe you discover that your corporate guests are bringing in more revenue than your leisure guests.
Armed with that knowledge, you can focus your sales and marketing efforts on attracting more corporate guests or find ways to enhance your leisure offering.
In addition, understanding your business drivers can help you optimize your distribution strategies. If you find that direct bookings generate more revenue than bookings through online travel agencies (OTAs), it makes sense to prioritize direct bookings.
When you take a closer look at your guest data, you can start to see patterns and trends that reveal which guests are most likely to be interested in additional services or amenities.
You can then target upsell opportunities that are priced appropriately, boosting your revenue and giving your guests an even better experience.
To guarantee you’re analyzing your data accurately, it’s important to establish clear naming conventions for things like rate codes, channel codes, and other data points. When your data is organized and labeled consistently, you can be confident that any insights you gain from your analysis are based on accurate information.
