Boo! In hospitality, the real horror stories don’t always come from haunted rooms or flickering hallway lights — though our very own Leslie, Sales and Revenue Manager for North America, once managed what’s rumored to be one of the most haunted hotels in America. And yet, ask any hotelier and they’ll tell you: the real chills don’t come from ghosts…
No, no… the real chills come from the quiet ping of a WhatsApp notification from your work group. That moment you look down, open it, and realize… something’s gone terribly wrong.
So, we asked our revenue management experts to share what wirklich keeps them up at night. The nightmares that make even the calmest RM break into a cold sweat.
Nightmare #1: Static Pricing — The Eternal Flatline
For many hoteliers, rates still look like this: one price for weekdays, one for weekends. That’s it. No shifts, no strategy, no reflection of market demand—just the same rate week after week. To a revenue manager, that’s pure horror.
Static pricing means missing out when demand spikes and overselling when it drops. It’s the equivalent of driving with your eyes closed. You might stay on the road for a bit, but you’ll never reach your full potential.
And yes, the RM community has one universal nightmare: seeing a hotel that still prices the same for a rainy Tuesday and a citywide concert Friday.
Nightmare #2: The Sold-Out Sorcery
That eerie sense that something’s off...
You’re fully booked… but everyone else in the market just doubled their rates. Then you see it: there’s a massive event in town that somehow slipped under the radar.
You didn’t mean to underprice. But now you’re watching competitors celebrate record ADRs while you serve up “value deals.” It’s the stuff of nightmares and a very real reminder that timing is everything.
Nightmare #3: The Never-Ending Discount
What began as a short-term promotion has become a permanent part of your life. You meant to run it for a week. It’s now been three months.
Every time you log in, you tell yourself you’ll deactivate it… but then something else comes up.
To a revenue manager, this is the “curse that won’t die.” Discounts are great tools but when they linger too long, they eat into your ADR like a hungry ghost…or something even worse.
Nightmare #4: The Missing Minimum Stay
It’s always the big weekends, the ones you plan for weeks in advance. Everything’s set up beautifully… except that one tiny detail. You forgot to apply the minimum stay restriction.
Now you’re full of one-night bookings on a three-day weekend. Housekeeping is in chaos, operations are exhausted, and your pickup graph looks like a broken heart monitor. Every Revenue Manager has felt the chill of this one.
Nightmare #5: The Spreadsheet That Wouldn’t Die
There’s always one. A sacred Excel file with 27 tabs, 14 hidden formulas, and color codes only its creator understands. You try to modernize, but somehow, it keeps returning. And heaven forbid the one person who understands it goes on holiday.
That’s when the nightmares really begin.
Nightmare #6: The Late Pickup Realization
It’s a quiet day. You’re sipping coffee, feeling calm. Then — bam! Pickup alert. Due to stormy weather the flights were cancelled in the near airport and now all those passengers need a place to stay, competitors have raised rates… and you didn’t notice until it was too late.
The rooms are sold, but your prices never caught up.
Nightmare #7: The OTA Creep
You thought you closed availability. You were sure of it. Then you check… and somehow, a stray room slipped through the net. Now you’re explaining overbookings and wondering if gremlins live in your channel manager.
Nightmare #8: The “Compset Copycat” Moment
You adjust your rates. The next day, your compset matches you exactly.
You raise them again. So do they. Suddenly you’re not strategizing—you’re waltzing.
Seems like your compset might be using you as their strategy.
The Eighth Was Scary Enough
Eight nightmares felt like enough. Any more and we might accidentally summon a ghost… or worse, another spreadsheet. 👻
Let’s face it—revenue managers live on the edge of uncertainty: reading signals, chasing trends, and occasionally wrestling spreadsheets. But every scare comes with wisdom. Every “uh-oh” becomes a “next time, I’ll know better.”
Because in the end, the scariest thing isn’t a bad forecast. It’s standing still while the market moves on.
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