Revenue Technology: Are You Doing It Wrong?

By Jessica Halterman

Technology helps hoteliers figure out if they’ve got their hotel revenue strategy just right—or all wrong

• No two hotels are exactly alike, despite being in a chain or large portfolio
• Every hotel has unique marketing & revenue strategies
• Revenue technology can help every hotel master their unique business 
   

Recently, I read an article describing the right way to pack liquor in your luggage. And I have to be honest with you…I didn’t know there was a wrong way to pack away booze.

Apparently, using a couple of t-shirts and sending up an audible prayer during baggage check-in isn’t everyone else’s go-to strategy.

(As a side note: A follow-up Google search later uncovered a WikiHow tutorial specifically outlining three separate methods you can use to accomplish this coup. Again, who knew?)

However, in addition to its eye-opening counsel, the article serves as food for thought around hotel strategies.

Namely, is there a right and wrong way to approach revenue strategy—and how do you know if you’re doing it wrong?

One of the most interesting facets of the hotel industry, in my opinion, is that no two hotels are exactly alike—regardless of whether they are part of a chain or portfolio of properties. And if every single hotel property is unique in its own way, its marketing and revenue strategies are going to be, too.

When it comes to executing a successful and profitable strategy, there are more than a few ways today’s revenue management technology can help every single hotel master their unique business.

Here are a few considerations you can use to evaluate how your current or future technology can help drive your highest profits to date:

• How does your technology handle the segmentation of hotel guests?
  • Can you segment business that allows for consistent reporting and optimal forecasting?
     
• What types of data do you use when building a forecast?
   
• How does your revenue solution manage the optimization of different room types?
   
• How does the system address the need for pricing all of your business types (both dynamically priced and fixed rate business)? What controls in addition to pricing are produced and at what levels?
   
• Are all of the controls analytically driven and automated or driven through manually set user rules?
   
• Does the solution address areas with untouched revenue potential, such as determining which room types to oversell based on demand—thus creating strategic upgrade paths?
   
• Can the solution help determine if the hotel is giving away too much inventory to corporate LRA accounts or wholesale allotments?
   
• Can your system validate ‘gut feelings’ with predictive and ‘what-if’ analyses that measure the impacts of making pricing and inventory decisions?