Image (from left to right): Ankur Yadav, Manager Sales, RateGain (extreme left), Kunwardeep Singh, Manager Account Management, RateGain (extreme right), Deanna Jeyasundera, AM, E-commerce and the rest of the team of Theme Resorts and Spas, Sri Lanka.
Theme Resorts and Spa’s, celebrated to feature some of the best resorts in Sri Lanka offers a new concept in providing excellent service whilst encouraging the inherent warm hospitality and experience in the hospitality industry.
This hotel chain is mindful of emerging trends, and at the same time conscious of treasuring its ancient cultural heritage. Their purpose is not to just sell you a hotel room, but to generate wonderful experiences and memories that will last a lifetime for their guests.
This Sri Lanka based hotel and resort chain has chosen RateGain’s Distribution Channel Manager tool for streamlining and optimizing its online distribution of inventory.
Moving ahead with our Brilliant hotelier series this week, our Sales Manager, Ankur Yadav , spoke with Deanna Jayasundera, Assistant Manager, E-commerce,Theme Resorts and Spa.
Ankur: Thanks for taking out time to speak to us and congratulations for being a leading theme hotel in Sri Lanka. What makes your hotel stand apart from the rest.
Deanna: The honor is all ours, thank you for having us on-board. Theme Hotel and Resorts is cognizant of the latest emerging trends, and at the same time conscious of treasuring its ancient cultural heritage. We strongly believe in generating wonderful experiences and memories that will last a lifetime for our guests and not to just vend them a hotel room.
Ankur: We understand that you strongly believe in your values and philosophy. How do you manage that?
Deanna: Yes, our values come first and we have set the bar very high for us. We go large distance providing excellent service and at the same time encouraging the inherent warm hospitality that Sri Lankans are eminent for.
We believe in establishing a long term relationship with our guests, but this does not mean we can ignore our bottom line.
We are a very technology pro-hotel chain. We believe in using tools and technology for the ease of doing business.
Thus, we have adopted solutions from RateGain for our room distribution, as this will help us in establishing a healthy relationship with our guests and a healthy bottom line too.
Ankur: I can see that you are currently rolling several attractive offers on your brand website. What are you doing to promote them?
Deanna: We run our SEO, PPC campaigns. We have also tied up with multiple marketing agencies that drive traffic to our website. We try to have the most attractive websites catering to different target groups on our website.
Ankur: How do you plan to drive bookings this holiday season and beyond.
Deanna: We will continue to offer value additions and other deals to our customers. We will also drive in the clientele by communicating offers through Email Campaigns.
Ankur: What is the hardest part about a Revenue Manager’s job?
Deanna: The ultimate goal of a revenue manager is to generate more revenue, achieve high guest satisfaction levels, and higher rank vs. competitors. Achieving all of this is the biggest challenge for any RM.
Revenue Management is a technique that helps hoteliers to achieve this by correctly identifying the target customer groups that the hotel has to serve, offering products and services under the optimal prices and ensuring positive feedback. It is a narrow bridge to walk on.
Thankfully, we have the technology available, that can assist us achieve our goals
Ankur: How did you handle Channel distribution prior to RateGain. How much time were you spending daily on Online channel distribution.
Deanna: Preceding to using RateGain’s Distribution Channel Manager, we were using another tool from a different vendor. But after evaluating RateGain’ Channel Distribution tool, we found it very efficient and much easier to use as compared to earlier one.
Ankur: What is the best thing about the current solution (RateGain’s Distribution Channel Manager). Has it made your life any better
Deanna: RateGain’s Distribution Channel Manager is a comprehensive online distribution tool, it offers powerful features, designed to accommodate to the business needs of hotels. Comprehensive dashboard, productivity analysis, and advanced automated inventory management makes it much easier for us to manage all our properties through one single central interface.
Ankur: Did you have a successful year post getting RateGain on board.
Deanna: Post the introduction of RateGain’s Channel Manager, we have successfully been able to tap other emerging markets even more effectively. It has been a really amazing year for us. We would like to thank team RateGain for this.
Ankur: Thank you for such kind words. We wish you all the very best for your future endeavors.