Managing hotel revenue has become an increasingly complex endeavor as individual skills and technology constantly advance. Long gone are the days of setting rates once a year, or even setting rates seasonally. Now, it’s about constantly adjusting rates along with the ebb and flow of demand.
Complicating matters, we’re entering a post revenue management world. It’s now the revenue optimization era, a time when hoteliers are constantly striving to maximize income with the most profitable business mix.
The notion, according to Oberlo, is this; by analyzing data, a revenue manager can predict how customers will react to a rate for any given night of the year. Revenue optimization also considers how much a guest is likely to spend while at the hotel as well, meaning, all guests are not created equal.
An article in HospitalityNet says it’s a distinct switch from short term to long term thinking, relating to “capturing mostly untapped revenue and profit potential, associated with hotels’ non-room revenue-generating centers. Some hotel chains are already expanding revenue management practices to F&B outlets and/or the function rooms,” the article says.
Here’s some tips to potentially thrive in the revenue optimization era:
Increase on Property F&B sales
Provide guests with a coupon for a free drink, for example. Its gets them into an F&B outlet or the bar, and most people have more than one cocktail. Alcoholic drinks have the highest profit margin in the hotel, upwards of 80% when done correctly.
Upsell Groups
If you have a focused service hotel, you may not have a full-service restaurant. In that case partner with a local restaurant and upsell groups, such as sports teams, on readymade dinners. Chances, there is some undersized meeting space in the hotel perfect for a group this size, and they’re willing to pay a premium to keep everyone in the hotel and well fed simultaneously.
Widen your Distribution
Tap into the power of a cloud based property management systems such as the SkyTouch Hotel OS® to connect to myriad online booking engines. The SkyTouch Hotel OS®, leverages two-way channel distribution management via XML connections with Online Travel Agency (OTA), Global Distribution System (GDS) and a customizable (branded) Internet Booking Engine (IBE) from a single cloud-based hotel PMS system to automate this strategy. This gets your hotel product in front of a wider, global audience.
Automate Rates For Potential Higher Returns
Automatic rate setting helps ensure your hotel is commanding the most effective price for any day of the year. The SkyTouch Hotel OS®, for example, gives users the ability to set pricing rules that help manage inventory value. Here, users simply set rate alert triggers for all days, or even specific days such as when a special event is coming to town. The system will then automatically adjust BAR levels based upon changes in actual occupancy or number of rooms sold. Plus, the system shares selling limits among designated wholesale rate plans.
Follow these tips, and they’ll help you be on your way to maximizing your income with minimum effort.
