This is in continuation to my last article which talked about various challenges hoteliers face with respect to distribution technology & why we believe significant changes are required in this space to make it frictionless & rewarding.
NB: This is an article from RateGain
Since publishing this article, we have spent several months deep diving into the pain points of hundreds of distribution leaders across various Hotels and demand partners to understand their business challenges and what do they want from their distribution technology landscape.
Basis these extensive discussions we have derived insights around the expectations from a modern distribution manager along with conceptualizing the end to end journey of hospitality distribution right from envisioning the channels to actually producing from these and identifying the friction at each step.
Today the realm of an effective distribution strategy exceeds beyond distributing rates and inventory between hotels and demand partners. The expectations from distribution managers are not limited to just enabling this exchange but also to:
- Control the rising cost of distribution on various online and offline channels available to maximize the ROI derived
- Derive reliable insights that will help unlock new revenue opportunities and open access to new source markets that may have been overlooked or unknown in the past.
- Reduce on-boarding time for a new channel: To keep in line with the fast paced nature of travel, the lengthy on-boarding process for new demand partners is no longer acceptable. Hotels are looking for quicker and more efficient ways of on-boarding new demand partners for them to start generating demand and hence generate revenue faster.
- Reduce setup time: Manual and tedious setup of content, images, room rates and inventory along with mundane tasks like mapping leads to frustration and delay in revenue generation for both the parties. Hotel distribution managers and channels are always on a lookout to make this process simpler and quicker to start generating value fast enough after the decision has been made.
In a nutshell, the new age distribution managers want to invest more of their time in building well thought through hotel distribution strategies for their product & much lesser time in mundane operational tasks.
Distribution Journey Problem
We believe that the modern hospitality distribution landscape demands more agility, and data based insights to be able to generate maximum value and unlock new revenue creation opportunities. A distribution ecosystem can become a window into creation of new opportunities for both hotels and demand partners if they get a platform which makes it frictionless to recommend the match between the hotel & the channel basis mutual value & enable a seamless connection to start deriving this value quickly. In our view, following are the key steps w.r.t distribution in hospitality.
While pushing of rates & inventory seems to be solved for, there are significant other steps which have been ignored for past several years. We believe it’s about time to make entire distribution technology smarter. It is our mission to make each and every step smarter & enable a frictionless experience for hoteliers to generate more revenue through most optimal distribution.
A smarter distribution would not only lead to data backed decision making, quick access to new sources of demands for hotels but also quick onboarding of new supply across the world for demand partners.
Benefits for Hotels
- Discovery of demand generating channels from across the world, for additional revenue
- Making informed decision about the channel based on several parameters like ADR, LOS, Booking Window etc.
- AI-led optimisation of channel mix to generate maximum revenue
- Faster contracting & on-boarding using AI-led mapping
- Ability to distribute to tour operators in an automated manner.
- Ability to distribute to tour operators in an automated manner
Benefits for Demand Partners
- Discovery of new supply partners
- Quick & easy setup
A ‘Smarter’ distribution landscape will help all parties in the hospitality ecosystem. Hotels & chains will get the benefit of increased revenues while reducing the operational costs. Demand partners will benefit from quick & easy setup & access to supply partners across the globe.
