In this digital era, every hotel business needs a solid growth plan to survive and thrive in a competitive market. This is exactly where a feature-rich revenue management system with analytical capabilities can be leveraged to increase asset performance and occupancy rate.
Here are 5 advanced analytical capabilities that hoteliers can leverage to increase their hotel sales and grow their revenue:
Personalize the Booking Process to Drive More Direct Bookings
A personalized guest experience is no longer restricted to just on-property. Revenue management systems are now extending personalization to hotel bookings!
RMS uses data to predict consumer preferences, booking behaviors, lead time, and preferred services to allow hotels to offer a seamless booking experience that is tailored to their unique needs. With specific data on what guests did during their previous stays, hoteliers can predict customer needs based on similar attributes.
For instance, a solo traveler who booked the hotel during midweek for a single night will have different needs and preferences as compared to a family that stayed over the weekend.
With easy access to booking lead times and inventory rates, the booking experience can be easily personalized for all types of guests.
Use Dynamic Pricing to Your Advantage
Revenue management systems use intelligent algorithms to optimize rates and availability. It tracks all supply and demand factors in real-time and accordingly pushes the best rates 30-60 times in a day to boost your hotel sales.
Whether it is a weekend, a festive season, or a holiday season, dynamic pricing automates the pricing strategy and inflates the rates on high occupancy days to boost your bottom line!
Leverage Insights to Increase Your ROI
The revenue management system generates accurate reports with data displaying all the revenue that is generated from different OTAs and other sources. The assessment of different channels helps revenue managers to make informed decisions on what works best for the hotel business.
Which channel is driving maximum bookings and what is the revenue generated from each source – all of this information is crucial for deciding how to allocate rooms to every source, when to arrange more rooms, and when to optimize the pricing.
Use AI to Bag Business Consistently
Successful hoteliers expect more than just bookings because they see beyond occupancy rates and understand how their room and inventory rates affect their overall business.
A Revenue management system helps determine the right pricing balance to boost sales 365 days of the year. It takes every factor into account – time, season, demand, competitor rates, linked rates, and the market data and accordingly adapts deals and discounts under the right conditions and at the right time to drive optimal revenue in the long run.
Forecast Demand Shifts and Adapt Your Marketing Strategies
Revenue management systems have a proprietary forecasting model for predicting the demand for rooms according to market segments. Based on an effective understanding of the price-sensitivities and booking curves, the analytics are employed to solve several challenges like adapting to fluctuating demands, accounting for the impact of rate changes, estimating price elasticity, and creating packages that deliver more value.
Similarly, if a hotel is running a promotional campaign and wants to determine the response rate or track the behavior of the guests, the revenue report will offer a clear view of how well the promotions fared so you can attract more guests.
With data-driven decision making, hoteliers now have complete control over marketing and revenue generation systems.
Advanced analytics detect booking patterns and consumer demands that are not visible to the human eye. These patterns include seasonal bookings, days to arrival, cancellations, length of stay, no-shows, early check-outs, occupancy rate, and more. Evaluating supply and demand from an analytical perspective brings you the ability to optimize revenue performance based on accurate, actionable insights – not on guesswork or gut feelings!
Karan Iyer is an end-to-end digital marketer and blogger who inherently understands the hotel industry with his hospitality background. Karan knows how to convert the pain points and challenges of the hotel industry into business opportunities, and that’s what he writes about for his readers. He also shares industry trends, insights and news to help his readers stay up-to-date.
Hotels stock photo by Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock
