As revenue managers, we spend endless hours studying various data points in order to make the most precise decisions. Many of us still work from excel sheets and although we are able to achieve great results for our hotels, we wonder… if I was able to automate part of this processes, could I free up more time to focus on pushing my strategies to market and increase my revenue? In today´s highly competitive market, two very sure ways to become market leaders are:
- Translating valuable data to meaningful actions
AND
- Speed to market in getting these actions in place
In order to accomplish the above two points, it´s critical that some manual processes are automated. Translating data to actions generally flows in the following way:
Collect > Organize > Analyse > Decision Making > ACTION
Finding a system that can bypass the first 3-4 steps would save us an enormous amount of time to put actions into place.
Gaining competitive intelligence is one of, if not the most important part of becoming a market leader. However, how can we use point 1 from above to make sense out of the competitive intelligence we receive?
Looking solely at competitor rates is not enough. Having an overall Benchmark rate takes that to the next level and even better than that, being able to give each competitor a certain % weight against our hotel could be even better. The below chart shows you an example of what I am referring to. Hotels often have 5-10 competitors however not each of those hotels hold the same relevance. Being able to make a weight % against your selected competitive set will give even more precision to your rate strategy.
| Competitor | Weight % out of 100 |
| Hotel A | 10 |
| Hotel B | 14 |
| Hotel C | 12 |
| Hotel D | 12 |
| Hotel E | 12 |
| Hotel F | 22 |
| Hotel G | 10 |
| Hotel H | 8 |
| TOTAL | 100 |
Another extremely important point to consider when pricing is the perceived value against your competitors. We often have a hard time to calculate this when making our pricing decisions. With the guest sentiment being a hugely important part of the guest decision process, we cannot exclude this from the equation. A tool that aggregates this data from the various review/OTA sites and gives us a value index against our guests is the answer! What if that same tool was able to take the competitive pricing data from above, combined with other relevant factors to give you an optimal sell rate? This is the perfect example of translating valuable data into meaningful actions.
The above are just a few examples of how technology can provide you with meaningful data. With the time saved on the collecting, organizing and analysing the data, we have much more time for Decision Making and Actions. At the end of the day, the quicker you can understand market changes, the quicker you can react and put those actions into place and become a market leader!
RateGain has enhanced Revenue Optimizer solution that gives Rate recommendations. Powered by machine learning yet simple & easy to use such that even non-revenue managers can use the tool. Request a Free Demo to embark into Revenue Management Automation journey.
