Increased competition and transparency in today’s booking landscape is making effective management of inventory a high priority for today’s hotelier. In Part 1 we discussed three key aspects of creating a balanced inventory management strategy and why they are important.
In Part 2, we’ll be looking at how technology, in particular Revenue Management Systems(RMS), can help you understand, price, and promote your inventory more effectively in tandem with your channel manager (CM).
What an RMS can do
We live in an era of big data. In order to create accurate demand forecasts and update room prices in real-time, you are going to be reliant on technological solutions. At the most basic level, a RMS can mine your reservation, booking and data, producing demand generation forecasts for every type of room for every day of the year. You will be able to see historic booking channels, lengths of stays, prices paid and the yield generated on each room, as well as any patterns in cancellations.
These forecasts work alongside optimisation programs in order to set inventory controls, enabling you to automatically set different rates for room types and lengths of stay up to specified overbooking levels. This approach allows you to cherry pick the highest value bookings (which given differences in underlying costs are not necessarily those with the highest room rate), thereby optimising the yield on your inventory.
