It’s a scenario we’ve seen play out time and again. You’ve invested in a cutting-edge Revenue Management System. You’re paying monthly for competitive data feeds, market intelligence, and algorithm-driven rate suggestions.
NB: This is an article from Catala Consulting
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and stay up to date
Your team attends vendor trainings, updates the forecast, and keeps the strategy “optimised.” You’ve checked every box. But then reality sets in:
- Your RevPAR hasn’t moved in six months.
- Your ADR is trailing the comp set.
- Your market share index is inching in the wrong direction.
It’s frustrating. And not because the tools aren’t working, but because it feels like you’re doing everything right and still losing ground.
At Catala Consulting, we hear this from hotel leaders all the time:
“We have the right system. We’re following the rules. But nothing’s changing.”
The truth? You’re not alone. And more importantly, you’re definitely not crazy. What most hotels discover, eventually, is this: Technology rarely fails. People do.
Not from lack of effort. But from lack of alignment. Not from incompetence. But from inconsistent urgency.
The real problem isn’t the tool. It’s the team around it
Here’s what often goes unspoken:
- The General Manager is focused on operational flow and guest experience. Pricing is “someone else’s job.”
- The Director of Sales is protecting group business and corporate agreements at all costs, wary of pushing rates too high (too low?).
- The Revenue Manager is trying to implement RMS recommendations, but lacks real support or authority.
Everyone’s doing their job. But no one’s working from the same premise: that revenue performance is lagging, and that fixing it is urgent.
Until your core leadership (GM, DoS, RM, DoF) not only understands the revenue problem but agrees it’s the organisation’s problem to solve now, no tool, strategy, or pricing model will move the needle.
That’s the real story behind stagnant performance: Not a bad system but a team that doesn’t see the same fire.
I. The illusion of progress: when tools mask deeper problems
The hospitality industry has made huge leaps in pricing technology over the past decade. Today’s RMS platforms can:
- Analyse historical trends and on-the-books data
- Incorporate competitor rates and event calendars
- Recommend optimised prices by room type and date
- Support rules-based or automated decision-making
The tech is smarter than ever, but smart tools can’t fix broken team dynamics.
Case in point: A leading RMS, a lagging property
One urban hotel (which we wont mention the name here) had all the right tools, top-tier RMS and PMS, accurate data feeds, and even support from the vendor’s customer success team. But nothing changed.
