React to Competitive Prices in Real Time with RateGain’s OPTIMA MarketDrone

MarketDRONE, the World’s only real-time cognitive rate intelligence solution, tracks the intra-day rate and rate plan changes by competitors in real-time and surfaces them to the revenue manager on the go on a device of their choice be it their smartwatch or a mobile. Moreover, we at RateGain (a leading travel and hotel revenue management company) are delighted to share that HSMAI Europe has awarded our OPTIMA MarketDRONE product with the Best Technology Innovation of the Year during their annual ROC and Awards in London on January 28th, 2020.

With MarketDRONE, stay on top of the competitive landscape while focusing on what matters the most, i.e. improving business and boosting profits. We realized that the revenue managers need flexibility and responsiveness that comes from mobile notifications. The product pings mobile devices and wearables with instant alerts so that revenue managers can act on intra-day rate changes immediately. So let us look at five ways of how Market DRONE can help to boost hotel revenues and make revenue manager’s life better.

Maintain rate competitiveness

The average hotel changes its rates around 3 to 4 times each day. To stay competitive, revenue managers must adjust to changing dynamics continually. Sadly, traditional rate shopping does not solve for the pace of change in today’s revenue-managed environment.

Our data has shown that a revenue manager, on average, may lose $1,000 or more each day by not acting quickly on intra-day market changes. That’s equivalent to an annual loss of around half a million dollars. With this rate analysis software, saving this loss is possible!

Enjoy the rewards of always-on artificial intelligence

Traditionally, rate shopping software solutions have always struggled with archaic pre-scheduled rate shop reports, which have to be sliced and diced in Excel. During the time that revenue managers stare at a spreadsheet, the competitive scene changes at a rapidly fast rate around them.

This market intelligence for hotels can identify market trends and keep revenue managers in charge of their revenue destiny. By identifying emerging patterns, both at the hotel and in the local market, you’ll have a more accurate understanding of market dynamics to guide your decisions. AI automatically rolls up the market trends so revenue managers can skip the traditional data slicing and dicing. Patterns and market insights emerge without as much effort, thus providing a better revenue management strategy.

Save time by reducing manual tasks

The traditional way of working includes – pre scheduling of reports by the revenue managers followed by spending a significant chunk of the day analyzing daily changes in the market to determine the appropriate response.

Moreover, revenue managers also have to analyze the performance of those decisions to judge the impact and then input those learnings into the next round of price adjustments. This method is quite cumbersome, error-prone, and time-intensive, thus affecting business goals.

The above method always puts revenue managers on the road of burning coal. The process puts enormous pressure on revenue managers, who often feel like they must double-check their analyses.

The instant alerts with the help of MarketDRONE provide market insights instantly, which means revenue managers can take the recommended actions on the go. Thus, making the decision-making process easier. OPTIMA MarkeDRONE observes the market for you and pushes real-time rate change notifications to a device of your choice.

Easy-to-use and simple to understand

One of the benefits of push notifications is that they are quite familiar and easy-to-use. Everyone has experience with this type of information, and with notifications pushed to smartphones, tablets, wearables, and desktops too, there is no new process to learn.

With an easy-to-navigate interface, technical users and businesses can gain access to instant market information availability. The system also learns with time without any additional inputs from the team. That means less training, ongoing maintenance, and certainly, no data uploads!

Freedom from desk

Revenue managers often spend too much time managing manual updates and approving rate changes within a desktop revenue management solution. Mobile notifications untether you from your desk! Whether you are doing a property tour without worrying about missing a market change or if you forget to bring your laptop home from work, these notifications go wherever you go.

Rather than spending hours after hours, hunkered over a computer screen reviewing pre-scheduled reports, the system monitors the competitive landscape and pushes notifications of rate changes in real-time.

Effective revenue management involves making strategic decisions, improving business, and boosting profits. With our MarketDRONE, revenue managers will be able to have an eye on the market, so no competitive movement goes unnoticed! By leveraging, the power of this AI and ML powered solution, revenue managers can stay on the path to profitability, no matter where they are in the World.

About the Author

Sandeep Singh
Senior Vice President – Product Management
RateGain