Skift Global Recovery Index, which provides granular insights on travel and hospitality industry recovery, shows that currently, we stand at 42% recovery compared to last year. The recovery index is growing week-on-week, but it is still a long journey ahead. The COVID-19 pandemic has left the Travel and Hospitality industry in a state of disturbance, confusion, and uncertainty. The challenges faced by hoteliers are multi-faceted. In simple words, it can be put as to how to survive, recover, and grow.
The primary objective for most hotels right now is survival. Once hotels have solved for survival, they have to again create their distribution strategy from the scratch. The well-defined goals & focus areas created between Jan to Mar 2020 might need a complete overhaul. To add to the problems, historical data might not be the best tool to forecast & take decisions. The new norm in terms of planning is “The last two weeks for the next two weeks.” This makes it very important for hoteliers to have real-time market insights to plan on their recovery strategy. With this intent in mind, we added “Future Demand” insights to our “Smart Distribution” offering.
Before proceeding on how we can help hoteliers with some trends around “Future Demand,” let us recapitulate Smart Distribution.
Smart Distribution for Hoteliers
RateGain’s distribution platform that includes AI-powered Smart Distribution, provides access to 1,500+ demand partners. It helps enterprise as well as independent and smaller hotel chains with new demand discovery, performance benchmarking with similar hotels, expedited new channel onboarding, 80% reduction in manual mapping efforts, 900+ tour operators connectivity, real-time enterprise analytics, and future demand insights. In one of my previous articles on PhocusWire and a video with HSMAI, I discussed on Smart Distribution at length. However, to conclude, the automation and innovation provided by Smart Distribution simplifies distribution and drives incremental revenue, which makes it a powerful tool that can be used for recovery from COVID.
The idea is to make it extremely easy for our hotelier partners to understand basics like:
- How are you performing compared to similar hotels around?
- Which source markets and demand channels are recovering faster?
- What are the new avenues of demand & how much revenue can you expect from these new sources?
- How quickly can you onboard this new demand channel?
It’s an honor when the UN’s specialized wing for tourism, the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), recognizes your focused efforts to solve Post-COVID challenges. UNWTO has declared ‘Smart Distribution’ as a solution that helps the industry in driving demand recovery and address UN’s Sustainable Development Goals 3, 8, 9 and 17 that aims to provide decent work, economic growth, enable partnerships and drive innovation.
Say Hello to Future Demand
During these difficult times, as is evident from our discussions with multiple customers, The distribution strategy needs to change everyday basis new protocols, COVID growth stats, opening up of airports/countries, and several such factors. The need is to get a clear picture of how different markets and demand channels are picking up to tweak distribution tactics on almost a daily basis. The entire ecosystem has come together & everyone is trying to help in some way or the other. Most technology partners in the hospitality ecosystem are sharing some sort of insights that can help hoteliers understand the key trends. While it is good, the only problem is that it is distributed across the web in most cases & hard to put together & connect the dots.
The new feature of Smart Distribution known as “Future Demand” helps hoteliers see insights on the Actual Revenue, ADR, and Room nights from transient business compared to similar hotels Hotels can also see channel by channel productivity trends for the coming year.
1. Actual Revenue, ADR, and Room Nights from Transient Business
Hoteliers can view the Actual Revenue, ADR, and Room Nights for the last year and the upcoming year. They can compare themselves with similar hotels to understand market trends & benchmark themselves. These insights are available for the properties subscribed to the channel manager of RateGain known as RezGain. It also highlights the trends that lie ahead for the subscriber’s property and similar hotels for the future check-in dates that span out for the next 12 months.
2. Compare Market Productivity
Hoteliers can check if their hotels are underperforming for any source market by comparing it with similar chains. They can compare their performance for the current as well as the historical period.
3. Compare Channel Productivity
Hoteliers can drill down into the demand coming from multiple source markets. They can click on any region and know about the performance of different distribution channels.
To summarize, these insights will help hoteliers understand the market landscape & align their distribution. Overall, these insights provide hoteliers with the right arsenal to help them recover & grow in this market.
To know more about how we can assist you with Future Demand using Smart Distribution, write back to us at amanda.smith@rategain.com or visit our page on Smart Distribution.
About the Author
Gaurav Singh
Senior Vice President – Product Management
RateGain
Gaurav Singh, Head of Product Management at RateGain, is a global business leader with 15 years of experience in building large scale B2C & Enterprise technology products across eCommerce, Finance & several other verticals. An industry thought leader, his areas of expertise lies in conceptualizing and executing on business strategy and growing products. A passionate innovator and entrepreneur he has a proven track record of spearheading innovative products from concept to launch in Hospitality Distribution.
