With just a small percentage of difference in your hotel’s RevPAR between success and underperformance, the role of the Revenue Manager (RM) is crucial to hotels.
NB: This is an article from NetAffinity
With the start of a new year, comes the perfect opportunity to re-educate ourselves on what makes a good Revenue Manager, and what you can do in January to be the best in the year ahead.
The job description may vary from hotel to hotel, but one thing that stays the same is the ability to optimise profit and increase the average daily rate (ADR) for the hotel.
This is a two-pronged process, the first being to crunch booking data to develop the most effective rates and revenue optimising strategies.
The second being, to filter this information throughout the hotel staff members who implement your strategies and rates. This is particularly important for the Marketing team, who use these rates to form their special offers and messaging.
The latter is the most challenging to achieve, motivating a workforce to implement your recommendations across the board can be tricky. Therefore, the skills required of a Revenue Manager don’t revolve purely around mathematical and technical capability, to do the job effectively you must also be a great communicator.
With this in mind, Net Affinity has put together a list of what all Revenue Managers should do in January to excel in the year ahead.
1. Get to know your colleagues – successful RM’s have topnotch relationship skills.
Get to know your team at the top of the year, make an extra effort to catch up with managers and those who will help you implement your strategies across the hotel teams. In a small hotel this is easily done, but for bigger hotels, chains and groups it can be more challenging.
2. Envisage your goals for the year, what do you hope to achieve?
The beginning of the year is a great time to set yourself targets and envisage the top line changes you’d like to achieve for your hotel during the quarter and year ahead. It’s also an optimal time to sit down with marketing, make a list of all the key dates throughout the year, and start planning.
3. Refresh your knowledge of your hotel’s markets.
As an RM you may or may not have a background in property management, either way, your markets and the hospitality industry as a whole is an ever-evolving beast. Kick-off the year with a refresher, ask the General Manager to give you the low-down on the hotel’s markets as they see them.
4. Devise a method to quantify your success.
Revenue Managers have one of the most crucial jobs for the financial success of the hotel, however, it’s not easy. When your predictions and recommendations are on the mark, it’s easy for someone else to get the credit, and when you’re wrong, it’s even easier for others to finger point in your direction. Protect yourself from this by setting up a method unique to your role, which measures your successes, and your failures. You can then use these metrics when pitching new or improved rate plans to your peers.
5. Create good habits with a weekly schedule to stick to.
Every good Revenue Manager will have a strict structure to their working week. It’s important to review and amend this routine in January to allow for any new metrics you need to analyse, or additional duties your role may have encompassed. Through routine checking and monitoring, more patterns will naturally stand out to you within the sea of data you look at regularly, and you’ll notice when something is slightly off, so you can make rate amendments efficiently and lessen the financial impact of those unexpected troughs in sales.
6. Go back to school – upskill!
New concepts, tools, and technology are available each year in the travel and tourism sector. Don’t get left behind with outdated skills, take some time in January to do an audit of what’s new in the industry and what is relevant for you to learn to improve in Revenue Management and create a plan to upskill yourself. Embrace new sophisticated tools and automation, after all, they’re not replacing you they’re just enhancing how you do your job.
Finally, try not to feel overwhelmed! Remember to use this as an opportunity to look upon goals with fresh eyes. Use all the resources available to you to aid your success – don’t be afraid to ask for help where you need it.
