In today’s world of innovative technology, it’s interesting to think about the automated outputs of our industry’s revenue management systems. In fact, a recent conversation around a colleague’s experience with international airport security keeps replaying in my mind:
Security: “What are you here for?“
Colleague: “Work meetings.“
Security: “Who do you work for?“
Colleague: “IDeaS.“
Security: “What does IDeaS stand for?“
Colleague: “Integrated Decisions and Systems, Inc.”
While the full company name isn’t used often, it is a gentle reminder of IDeaS’ position on the topic of decisions versus recommendations.
Many revenue management systems provide recommendations that require a manual validation and/or deployment while IDeaS’ advanced revenue management solutions produce automated decisions.
IDeaS felt so strongly about producing and automating decisions for its clients that it named the company around emphasizing this approach 27 years ago. I don’t recall much of anything being automated in the hospitality industry during the late 80s, but IDeaS had the foresight to know this would be an integral component of leading technology to hotels worldwide.
Unlike decisions, which are system controls that are continually optimized and automatically deployed to integrated selling systems, recommendations have to be manually implemented into integrated selling systems. This means users are still responsible for reviewing, approving and uploading every recommendation the revenue management system produces.
This not only impacts the amount of time and resources spent validating and uploading decisions, but also forces users to be less nimble – having less time to course correct when there are sudden shifts in the market.
All hotels face the challenges of forecasting occupancy, setting associated pricing strategies, determining overbooking levels, distributing pricing across various channels and reporting on the results. However, hotels should not have to sacrifice time that should be spent on strategy that is spent instead on reviewing and implementing their system recommendations.
Read rest of the article at: IDeaS
