There are two stories of travel recovery that we are witnessing right now in the United States. During the summer of 2021 hotels everywhere witnessed an overwhelming number of tourists who came back to enjoy a well deserved summer break. We all heard stories of how some destinations ran out of rental cars and hotels were at full occupancy with ADR and bookings bucking all previous trends in a traditionally low-demand season. The fall out of this surge has been the sharp rise in hospitalizations across states that have low vaccination rates when compared to the national average.

Whatever it is, volatility remains the theme of the season as we move towards recovery making it challenging for revenue managers to plan for the future. However, what is key here is to define how we look at the future. In my understanding there are two futures – the one that needs immediate attention and the one we need to plan for.

The future we all discuss is not just the next quarter or next six months – but a future where volatility will increasingly become a part of revenue management as we tackle global disruptions on a daily basis. This includes changes in not only traveler behavior, but also resources available at the supply side; local restrictions; international events and more. Nothing can be predicted with certainity and this forces revenue management teams to be in a continous evolution mode.

Right pricing is slowly becoming a big piece of the puzzle – as optimizing strategies to accommodate rise and decline in demand can have adverse impact on margins. So is there a way to handle both the futures?

The Immediate Future: Tackling Volatility Everyday

A breakthrough innovation that is already making a lot of noise among revenue leaders is MarketDRONE Narratives. It is more than a data analyzing tool – it helps Revenue Managers become better at their job.

Market volatility is a reality. Tackling it manually, sourcing data and deriving insights from it isn’t just tedious but it strips critical hours from a revenue manager’s life that could have been invested in realizing revenue maximizing.

Get clear and actionable insights every time there is a change in the market – helping revenue and pricing managers know exactly how to position one’s revenue strategies for the day, while mitigating any loss of market share and increasing RevPAR – saving critical hours spent in collating and analyzing data.

MarketDRONE Narratives feeds on a data lake, using a mix of distribution and market supply data combined with competitive rate shopping data across Hotels and OTAs. Learn more.

Commenting on it, Harmeet Singh, CEO, RateGain said “As one of the largest aggregators of data in our industry, RateGain is committed to listening to our customers who have clearly stated the need to evolve rate intelligence solutions. MarketDRONE Narratives is a step in that direction where we continue to push innovation and help our customers move faster every day to unlock more revenue.

The Long-term vision: Making the Future of Travel clear

At RateGain, our team has been obsessing over these challenges for months – it has heralded an array of exciting innovations like Demand-AI. Imagine if marketing or distribution teams could foretell the source and place of the upcoming surge in demand in a particular locality! What if they could forecast in advance the dates when demand will be the highest?

Wouldn’t it make more sense business-wise to know what kind of guest will potentially be visiting your city? Indeed, these insights would be mission-critical for any hotel or hospitality business to drive revenues and improve ROI. A highly targeted, data-driven and geo-specific campaign would show better results vis-a-vis a campaign without this intelligence – it helps you get more ROI on your ad spend.

The industry’s first AI-powered index uses over 25 forward looking real-time demand indicators and does not rely on historical data to give you the exact picture of demand for the next 75 days in a city. No plug-ins and no configuration required. Just sign up and start planning ahead.

At the same time, it offers hoteliers an opportunity to direct their resources towards the best guest experience by planning ahead. You can See it for yourself by signing up for Demand.AI

Demand-AI serves a bigger purpose though. In the words of our founder Bhanu Chopra, “I am proud of my team today as we launch Demand.AI, a product created and conceptualized, end-to-end by RateGain, to make the future of travel clear and provide insights for the next 75 days at a hyper local level, helping businesses with critical insights to not only recovery but also create sustainable jobs.”

What lies ahead

I feel we are still some time away from realizing full recovery. Our industry is sitting on volumes of data –making it more accessible for revenue managers and distribution teams would be the real gamechanger. The need of the hour is predictive data and technologies, as past data has been rendered almost ineffective. While this crisis leapfrogged us in the new digital age, the future belongs to those who adopt these technologies. What’s stopping you?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this exciting theme and would like to showcase these technologies LIVE in action. As I hit the road once again to meet industry experts – reach out to me at any of these events to see the products in action: Skift Global Forum, HITEC Dallas and HSMAI ROC this September in Dallas or at HEDNA – Miami in October. Look forward to hearing from you.

About the Author

Rob Siegel
Vice President, Sales & Strategic Alliances
RateGain