Rethink Hotels

This is a guest post by Jerry Rosen, SVP and global chief marketing and creative officer at RMG Networks,

Today guests are in the driver’s seat when it comes to selecting a hotel. The reason:  the social Web. Travelers can learn pretty much everything they want to know about hotels in a given market by visiting review websites and travel websites focused on hotels or offering a broad range of travel services.

Travelers can conduct comparative shopping based on pricing, hotel amenities, customer satisfaction and other factors in half an hour or less. Thus, it is more important than ever for hotel managers to offer guests the right amenities — both to attract new guests and increase the number of positive online reviews from current and former guests. Here are the top amenities hotel guests crave: [Read more…]

By now you might have heard that ADR has been on the rise in recent years, however, profit has been stagnant. Even the most sophisticated and educated team can’t avoid finger pointing, and usually the elephant in the room takes the blame: OTA commissions. In an extreme case, I have heard of a hotel exceeding its budget for commissions by a few hundred thousand dollars for the year.

So shall we talk about reducing the number of bookings on OTA and increase the number of Direct Booking? Let’s create attractive promotions and packages on the website with greater value, and create qualified discounts offering lower rate than all unqualified rates such as those published on the OTAs. These tactics certainly do work, however, you probably have noticed that they did not do much to deter the growing volume of business through OTAs. [Read more…]

Traditionally, revenue management has operated on its own, but increasingly it is moving toward working together with many different departments for the most impact.Sales, Catering, and Front Office are obvious first choices. However, revenue management is ready to evolve to bring online marketing and technology into this fold. Some brands and small chains understand this and work to maintain this integration but it is missing from most chains and independent hotels. [Read more…]

This is a guest post by Jeong, pronounced “Jung”, Pyon. He is the Director of Revenue at the Trump Vancouver, Canada.

Are opaque channels friends or foes? This may not seem like a serious question at first, however, most often revenue managers must defend themselves against rest of the team when using channels such as Hotwire & Priceline Opaque. Those battles almost make revenue managers feel like lawyers in a courthouse defending a criminal. Compromises are made, and hotels usually agree on using opaque strategy to get rid of “last remaining rooms” at “anything above the cost”.

This is revenue management hypocrisy at its very best. Often, non-revenue managers want to take group business at a rate that is too low to be true for the sake of ‘building a base’. That’s not all. ‘Fantastic’ last room availability rates are provided to negotiated corporate accounts, and contracts are signed with Wholesale FITs such as GTA and Tourico often without consulting with revenue managers. [Read more…]

Customer segmentation is one of most critical things you have to do in your revenue management practice. This segmentation is based on which offer a person has booked. Breaking down the business in segments allows us to focus and drive the performance of that segment.

[Read more…]

This is a guest post by Kristen Gramigna, CMO for BluePay

Mobile payments are now a common means of accepting payment in stores, food trucks and festivals — but did you know travelers have embraced them wholeheartedly, too? In fact, nearly half of travelers who responded to a survey by the air transport firm SITA said they’d “definitely” use mobile payments during their journey.

Here’s are a look at why customers now expect that the hotel they choose has embraced mobile payment technology.
[Read more…]

One of the things Booking.com and Expedia do very well is testing and optimizing. Most of the Ecommerce players in the market have this culture but these two are extremely well known for it.

Have a look at the work that went into building Booking.com for Business.

We are seeing some of this happening in hotels as well. This is coming from some chain hotels and new technology providers. Hotels have to build this culture internally. As the idea of testing to find improvements is the one that keeps innovation happening.

As the budget season is approaching and we are thinking about expenses for next year. Why do we not have a small amount in the yearly budget just dedicated to trying out new things.

It is not the amount but the mindset that will make the difference. Don’t get me wrong if you have a big budget it definitely helps but the initially you are focused on getting everyone to buy in and see the benefits of this approach.
[Read more…]