Hotel revenue strategy is constantly changing. Are you changing with it?
NB: This is an article from Rainmaker
Looking back on the last 20 years, the hospitality industry has come a long way. Gone are the days of focusing on occupancy and ADR – we no longer simply have one rate and can no longer just set and forget our rates. In today’s world we have reports, channels, rate shops, daily rates, MARs, indexes and so much more that we have to consider each and every day as we make revenue decisions. This is not an easy thing to manage and there are pain points all along the way. In a recent webinar we discussed how to overcome and take a hammer to these pain points and get more time back in your day to focus on your revenue strategy.
Pain Point #1: Seeing the Big Picture
Revenue strategy today encompasses so many different factors and metrics. You must understand all aspects of your property and maximize profit from every segment of your business. Maybe you have pool cabanas – are you adjusting the pricing of these during peak pool times?
We can no longer focus on only room revenue. Hotel revenue strategy today is also about efficiency, simplifying complicated processes and streamlining work for all stakeholders. You’ve come up with your revenue plans, but do you have what you need to implement these plans at the touch of a button? Use the below list to ensure you are meeting the needs of today’s demanding market and wipe out the pain point of not being able to see the big picture!
- Have quick and easy access to the basics. When you walk into your property each morning, are you able to immediately pull the numbers from the night before?
- Have easy to view metrics for a span of about 21 days, using both historical and future data
- Dive into YOY performance at the pace and forecasted level by segment
- Look at both constrained and unconstrained demand forecasts and pickup
- Pay attention to your pace – what is coming to your hotel and when is it coming?
- Make sure your data is easily accessible. Can you access and change your rates if you are off property?
Pain Point #2: Response Time
It’s a tale as old as time – your revenue management and sales teams tend to not see eye to eye when it comes to revenue decisions. Is your property able to receive a group request and be the first to respond to the RFP? As we all know, the fastest responses often win the business. Are you maximizing group results and ensuring your revenue and sales teams are on the same page? The below solutions to the response time pain point have helped revenue managers increase their group revenue and conversions.
- Utilize multiple data inputs and go beyond whether or not you have the rooms available for the group and your rack rate
- Go beyond displacement to dig in to the total value of the group
- Optimize group pricing recommendations by responding quickly with optimal rates
- Arm your sales team and give them the tools they need to sell. Give your sales team three rates for each rate quote: an optimal rate, a ceiling rate and a floor rate
- See the value of the group vs. transient displacement – Be able to show the sales team some of where the proposed rates are coming from, let them know there is science behind them
- Visualize forecasted hotel occupancy & be able to give the sales team alternate dates
Pain Point #3: How Does it All Fit Together?
Revenue managers have their pulse on a massive amount of information every day. A lot of this information can be housed in spreadsheets – but what happens if you brake a formula? Or worse, you carry on with your day-to-day decisions not knowing a formula is incorrect. A good business intelligence tool can get you a lot of time back in your day, allow you to easily identify trends and issues and act with confidence by ensuring that your data is the most accurate it can be. We’ve compiled a list of solutions to solve the pain point of making it all fit together.
- House all your data in one place
- Go beyond the “what” to understand the “why”
- Act with confidence and confirm that your formulas are correct
- Monitor pace to indicate what is happening at your hotel & how fast things are happening to ensure you can speed up or slow down pace to fit your needs
- Take reporting to the next level and dive into metrics such as rate codes, transient vs. group, or even dive into your corporate negotiated category and see what rate codes have been producing
- Compare YOY data
- Dive into pickups by day
- Check out your budget vs. your forecast vs. on the books
- Research by market segment – where are you losing customers?
