Image Credit: Trisna Widia, the Corporate Internet Marketing & E-Commerce Manager with Ankur Yadav, AM Customer Success, APAC, RateGain
Prime Plaza Hotels and Resorts – ‘The Signature of Indonesian Hospitality’ is a proud establishment delivering genuine hospitality services. The group encompasses a wide range of services and brands to cater to the diverse needs of the modern day traveler. These 4-star rated properties focus on business guests, offering them state-of-the-art meeting facilities, extensive banquets and lots more. Besides, the prime location of all Prime Plaza hotels caters to leisure travelers, who can revel in diverse dining and family entertainment options.
Continuing our Brilliant hotelier series, this week, our Customer Success Manager, Ankur Yadav, spoke to Trisna Widia, the Corporate Internet Marketing & E-Commerce Manager, Prime Plaza Hotels and Resorts.
Hi Trisna! Thank you for taking out your valuable time for the Brilliant Hotelier series. I would like to congratulate the entire team of Prime Plaza Hotels and Resorts on completing so many successful years in this business. How does it feel to be one of the veterans in the Indonesian hospitality business today?
Thank you for the kind words! Well, with so many years of operation in the hotel industry, new challenges become inevitable for properties in this region, and ours is no exception. But human resource remains the main area of challenge and in order to resolve it, one has to apply new methodologies. Working with the millennial generation is easy as they are a tech-savvy lot and have grown up around gadgets and gizmos. But the main challenge is getting the older generation to work, for they are reluctant to step outside their comfort zone.
Nevertheless, we are devoted towards making use of eCommerce and online marketing channels. These are dynamic fields and we have to maintain a demand proactive attitude while implementing them. Only then we can keep up the latest hospitality technology trends and in the end, lead our competitive set.
Tell us more about how your service defines ‘The Signature of Indonesian Hospitality’. What are the special amenities offered under your banner for business and leisure travelers?
‘The Signature of Indonesian Hospitality’ is our motto and this tag-line keeps us motivated at all times since it revolves around the total service delivery. Customer satisfaction and hospitality is the incessant behavior and a gift of the Indonesian people. So, you can presume that good service is already present in our DNA. The amenities that we offer are no different from our competitors in the region, rather it is our service quality and guest oriented interaction that sets us apart. Hence we try to satisfy our guests by anticipating their needs in advance and offering them services which stretch beyond their expectations.
Competitive positioning is about defining how you’ll differentiate your offerings and your hotel online. How does a good Hotel online reputation management tool help you manage your branding?
The maturity of digital portals and a plethora of social forums today have made information transparent and accessible in a few clicks. The core challenge is to determine the level of discretion when it comes to sharing data online, and a smart reputation management program like BrandGain makes that easy for us. So far, your team has done a great job in managing our hotel’s online reputation.
Every staff member in a hotel should be well aware of certain discretion levels. After all, the ultimate goal is guest satisfaction and it eventually becomes the main marketing ammunition in today’s online battlefield and helps a hotel win customers over its competition.
In order to redefine your customer’s experience, we understand that you have crafted a wide range of special offers for them. Please elaborate more on a few new ones.
We have some innovative offers to entice customers so that they can book directly, instead of taking the OTA route. For example, we roll out bundled promotions which include minimum night stays and discounts on all out hotel outlets. In order to enrich the visitor’s experience, we have revamped our website, following which we were able to grow customer engagement that can boost the overall conversion.
We have also tried RateGain’s industry leading suite of products, which in my opinion are very innovative. The Bundle Offer or Unified Revenue Management comes with a lot of features and is competitively priced as well. We have tried similar solutions in the past from other vendors but were not satisfied with the results.
Image Credit: Prime Plaza Hotels and Resorts
What is your take on today’s smart hospitality technology solutions? Are hotels in your region proactively embracing them in the form of Unified Revenue Management Suites?
The rapid adoption of open source technology solutions has made technology highly available and more affordable today. But we need to be very diligent while choosing the right solution partner. I think every hotel is looking at an integrated and efficient platform that collates data, which is in silos. In my opinion, a good hotel Revenue Management System should have the capability to predict the future and keep a hotel in the forefront.
Some Indonesian hoteliers believe that current hotel pricing trends are mirroring the trends of the quick, dynamic, and unpredictable Forex Trading Market. So the idea is to have a principle based hotel pricing algorithm that encompasses fundamental revenue management concepts as well as technical data analysis applications. Only then a hotel can arrive at a smart pricing decision and RateGain does exactly this for us. Since it’s an industry trend, I am sure other hotels in the region are also doing the same.
How has RateGain helped you in your journey till date?
So far, our journey with RateGain has been very satisfactory. Unity – the unified revenue management suite renders a seamless, organized and completely integrated reporting for our 11 hotel-unit property. We are looking forward to leveraging all the other features, innovations and dynamic reporting functionalities of Unity in the near future. On a similar note, we have been considering a revision in our revenue management culture so as to refurbish our understanding of good revenue management practices in-house.
That is amazing! Good luck with your future endeavors.
If you’d like to share your thoughts about the post or the hospitality sector in general, kindly drop an email to us at marketing@rategain.com.
We look forward to hearing from you!
