Free guide: The Benefits of Revenue Management
Esta guía le enseñará cómo la gestión estratégica de ingresos impulsará la rentabilidad y la eficacia operativa de su property, independientemente de cómo cambie el mercado. La guía describe cómo la gestión de ingresos puede beneficiar a los líderes de muchos departamentos operativos, incluidos los propietarios/operadores de hoteles, los directores de hotel y los directores de recepción. Al final de la guía, comprenderá el valor de la tecnología de precios automatizada para apoyar la estrategia de gestión de ingresos de su property y maximizar las oportunidades de ingresos, tanto a corto como a largo plazo.
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Contenido
Section One – The Benefits of Revenue Management
for hotel owners / operators
Section Two – The Benefits of Revenue Management
for hotel managers
Section Three – The Benefits of Revenue Management
for front desk managers
The Benefits of Revenue Management
for hotel owners / operators
start reading below
There are many benefits of implementing a data-based revenue management practice at a property, especially for the owners/operators who are responsible for ensuring that the hotel remains financially viable.
To effectively implement revenue management, a hotel owner/operator must invest in a sophisticated revenue management system (RMS), as it enables the automated collection, analysis of huge amounts of data, which then provides accurate pricing recommendations in real-time; in addition, when it is connected with a channel manager, the new prices can be automatically updated across the all the online distribution channels, making it a completely hands-off process.
Using RMS technology, hotel owners and operators can leverage the following benefits of revenue management to achieve their overall goal: ensuring the property’s sustained profitability.
Mejora de la toma de decisiones
Revenue management-based pricing decisions are based on data, not intuition (eliminating the potential risk of human error). Implementing dynamic pricing using RMS gives hotel owners and operators a wealth of data – including past performance data, real-time market conditions, competitor pricing and more – which is analysed to discern patterns, predict future behavior and make automated pricing recommendations, as the market changes.
Mejor comprensión de las necesidades de los huéspedes
Al analizar los patrones de reserva, las tasas de cancelación, la duración de las estancias e incluso el tipo de servicios que prefieren los huéspedes, los propietarios y operadores hoteleros pueden adaptar más eficazmente su oferta para satisfacer las expectativas de los clientes. Entender el comportamiento de los clientes también ayuda a crear estrategias comerciales y de marketing personalizadas, lo que puede dar lugar a mayores tasas de conversión y a una mayor fidelidad de los clientes.
Mantener la competitividad
Revenue management systems provide benchmarking data that allows hoteliers to compare their performance against their direct competitors within their destination (known as the property’s comp set). Benchmarking is crucial for identifying competitive advantages and areas that need improvement in a property’s operations and pricing strategy.
Mayor satisfacción de los clientes
By finding the proper balance between price, market demand and guest expectations, hotels can increase online bookings and improve the guest experience. It has been proven that increased guest satisfaction can lead to repeat business and more positive reviews, which are shown to increase the property’s perceived value, enabling the property to increase their ADR over time.
Enables better strategic leadership decisions
Revenue management can also inform broader strategic leadership decisions, such as hotel expansions, renovations, service offerings and staff training programs. By relying on accurate market and benchmarking data, owners and operators can ensure that their strategic initiatives are appropriately aligned with market opportunities, guests’ preferences and always focused on improving operational efficiencies to maximise guest satisfaction.
Aumentar los beneficios
By analyzing demand patterns, a hotel’s RMS can update prices to fill more rooms at the highest possible rate, enhancing both occupancy and ADR. Data-driven strategies assist owners and operators improve their resource allocation, ensuring that the hotel’s investments are yielding the best possible returns over the short- and long-term.
But here’s an important caveat… an RMS is critical to a property’s success in today’s highly competitive landscape but there’s another important factor to consider, which is integral for optimal revenue management: the human element.
A hotel’s staff plays a crucial role in interpreting, contextualizing and executing the insights generated by RMS. To be most effective, training staff in revenue management principles goes beyond the operational elements; hotel owners and operators must create a revenue management-first culture. When all team members understand and embrace the importance of revenue management, they can collectively contribute to the hotel’s revenue optimization goals and maximize the ROI on the property’s revenue management activities.
By embracing data analytics to create a strategic approach to pricing and distribution, hotels can improve their financial performance and enhance the guest experience – but only if the owners/ operators are on-board with implementing RMS technology and, also, in training their employees to prioritize revenue management as an operational imperative across all departments.
The Benefits of Revenue Management
for hotel managers
La función de un Director de Hotel (o Director General) es polifacética y requiere una combinación de liderazgo, experiencia operativa y capacidad para desarrollar y supervisar la ejecución de objetivos empresariales estratégicos.
One of the most important actions that a Hotel Manager must take is to develop the property’s revenue management strategies—a critical component that can make or break a hotel’s financial success. A Hotel Manager should be adept at using revenue management insights for strategic planning, including setting long-term goals, budgeting, and investment decisions. Additionally, understanding the competitive landscape, including competitors’ pricing strategies and market positioning, is vital for maintaining a competitive edge.
To make effective revenue management decisions, Hotel Managers must understand the fundamental principles of supply and demand, segmentation and effective pricing strategies, as successful revenue management is about selling the right room, to the right customer, at the right time, for the right price, through the right distribution channel.
Precios 101
Los estudios demuestran que los hoteles que ponen un precio más alto a sus habitaciones que la competencia suelen obtener más beneficios en general, tanto en los buenos como en los malos tiempos. Esto refuerza la necesidad de que los directores de hotel comprendan e integren la predicción y previsión de la demanda (véase más adelante) en su estrategia de gestión de ingresos para asegurarse de que sus precios son exactos, independientemente de cómo cambie el mercado.
Forecasting and demand prediction
Effective revenue management is predicated on the ability to forecast future demand accurately. There are two ways to predict future demand: manual analysis of past and current booking trends, market conditions and external factors (such as events or holidays), or by using automated pricing technology that will do that all the data collection and analysis automatically, in real-time, freeing up the Hotel Manager to focus his attention on strategic decision-making and on improving the guest experience. Obviously, the latter is a much more effective use of the Hotel Manager’s time, as manual data analysis is time consuming and is prone to human error.
Hablando de soluciones automatizadas de fijación de precios...
Revenue management technology
Como acabamos de mencionar, el uso de un sistema Revenue Management (RMS) o una solución de tarificación automatizada (como RoomPriceGenie’s!) leverages data analytics to forecast demand, analyse market trends and competitor pricing and adjust room rates in real-time, ensuring prices are competitive yet profitable. This data-driven approach enables hotel managers to make informed decisions and stay competitive. Automated pricing solutions enhance operational efficiency and provide valuable insights into customer behavior and booking patterns, helping Hotel Managers to increase their property’s occupancy during off-peak times to ensure a steady flow of revenue.
Market segmentation and price optimization
A crucial aspect of revenue management is identifying the most common market segments that make up a property’s guests; common market segments include business travelers, leisure travelers, groups and customers who are part of the property’s loyalty program (a.k.a. repeat guests!).
Each segment has unique booking behaviours and price sensitivities, so Hotel Managers need to understand each segment and how to best set their rates to appeal to the property’s most profitable segments, optimising occupancy and ADR.
Distribution & channel management
A hotel’s visibility across various distribution channels is critical, as it will directly impact the property’s long-term profitability; knowledge of the cost-benefit analysis of each channel and how to leverage them for maximum exposure and profitability is essential for a Hotel Manager’s success in revenue management.
En general, los directores de hotel deberían hacer más hincapié en las reservas directas (a través del sitio web de la marca del hotel.com) siempre que sea posible, debido al menor coste de adquisición, y utilizar las agencias de viajes online (OTA) como apoyo para aumentar la visibilidad y las reservas cuando no es probable que el property esté al 100% de ocupación. La regla básica para gestionar la disponibilidad de las OTA es la siguiente: dar la mayor disponibilidad posible a las OTAs si no es probable que esté todo reservado (ya que te recompensan por compartir tu inventario), pero limitar la disponibilidad cuando las ventas de la OTA limiten sus ventas directas.
Estar en las OTAs proporciona a los hoteles un alcance adicional y el beneficio del efecto valla publicitaria; por lo tanto, cuantas más OTAs aparezca un property, más gente verá su property, y más posibilidades tendrá de convertir la venta (ya sea a través de las OTAs o directamente).
Una nota importante: mantener la presencia de un property en más OTA requiere más trabajo, incluida la configuración del perfil del hotel y la actualización del contenido y las fotos en todos los canales de distribución cada vez que cambia algo, por lo que un gestor de canales es imprescindible en la pila tecnológica básica de todas las propiedades. El gestor de canales hará que sea relativamente sencillo, en el día a día, aparecer en tantos canales como sea posible, sin crear trabajo extra ni quebraderos de cabeza añadidos.
Por último, es importante que los directores de hotel evalúen continuamente el rendimiento de cada canal y, si las reservas no se convierten en una OTA concreta, reasignen el inventario a un canal más rentable.
The art of hospitality
En esencia, la hospitalidad consiste en crear experiencias excepcionales para los huéspedes. Un director de hotel debe entender cómo influyen los precios en la percepción que tiene el cliente de su experiencia global para desarrollar estrategias de gestión de ingresos que atraigan nuevos negocios y garanticen que cada cliente disfrute de una estancia óptima. Para lograrlo, los directores de hotel deben utilizar los datos de los huéspedes (del CRM) para personalizar sus experiencias, crear promociones específicas basadas en la demanda actual del mercado y crear programas de fidelización que impulsen la repetición del negocio y atraigan a nuevos clientes a través del boca a boca positivo.
In essence, revenue management is a comprehensive discipline that touches every aspect of a hotel’s operation but for Hotel Managers, a deep understanding of revenue management is imperative for driving revenue growth, ensuring guest satisfaction and achieving long-term profitability. El camino hacia el dominio de la gestión de ingresos es continuo y requiere aprendizaje, adaptación y capacidad para identificar tendencias de mercado impactantes, oportunidades de ingresos y posibles oportunidades de mejora operativa o estratégica para obtener mejores resultados.
The Benefits of Revenue Management
for front desk managers
The Front Desk Manager in a hotel is pivotal in orchestrating the first and lasting impressions of guests, managing the reception team to ensure a seamless check-in and checkout process, handling reservations and addressing guest inquiries and concerns – always with the utmost professionalism.
The Front Desk Manager is also responsible for scheduling, training and management of all logistics related to having the rooms ready for guests (i.e., reservations, housekeeping, maintenance, etc.), as well as ensuring that the front desk provides the best possible customer service to guests, 24/7.
In short, the Front Desk Manager is a central figure at a hotel because they ensure the optimal guest experience and are tasked with maximizing operational efficiency. While this role might not be the first one you think of as having an important role in the revenue management process, the Front Desk Manager does play an important, behind the scenes role in the strategic development and execution of a property’s revenue management.
When you remember that revenue management is a strategic approach that not only boosts profitability but also significantly enhances guest satisfaction, it makes it easy to understand that revenue management activities should be intertwined with the roles and responsibilities of a Front Desk Manager, as it will ultimately elevate the guest experience and, as such, improve the hotel’s overall long-term profitability.
Dynamic pricing: a win-win for guests and hotels
Uno de los aspectos más importantes de la moderna gestión de ingresos es la fijación dinámica de precios, que sólo es posible mediante la implantación de sofisticados sistemas de gestión de ingresos (RMS) que automaticen la recopilación y el análisis de datos de mercado, demanda, estacionalidad, precios de la competencia, entre otros factores, y proporcionen recomendaciones de precios automatizadas y en tiempo real.
Una preocupación habitual de muchos hoteleros (sobre todo de los Directores de Recepción) es que los clientes se enfaden y se sientan "estafados" si un hotel aplica precios dinámicos. En realidad, los precios dinámicos no influirán significativamente en la satisfacción de los huéspedes con su estancia ni impedirán que dejen una crítica positiva después de la misma.
In fact, a 2023 Estudio de la Universidad ZHAW of hotels using RoomPriceGenie’s automated pricing solution showed that guests’ overall satisfaction increased after the implementation of RoomPriceGenie; however, the guests’ ratings for price fairness and their intention to recommend both went down by small amount. (This is most likely because RoomPriceGenie’s solution is designed to help hotels earn the highest ADR possible, and likely, the room rates increased after implementing the solution, to match market value.)
When you dig deeper into the data to examine guests’ intention to recommend the property (before and after the implementation of dynamic pricing), you find that, while the overall intention decreased slightly, the number of people who answered in the top 20% on the likelihood that they would recommend the property increased, which is a positive development as these are the people who would like also leave a positive review for the
property.
En general, la percepción de los huéspedes sobre los precios de los establecimientos también cambió en el estudio: tras implantar el RoomPriceGenie, más huéspedes percibieron los precios como dinámicos, lo cual es un resultado positivo porque implica que los huéspedes entienden que los precios dinámicos se basan en factores lógicos de la vida real (es decir, la oferta y la demanda), en lugar de ser un precio aleatorio que no está respaldado por datos concretos.
Como demostró el estudio de la Universidad ZHAW, los precios dinámicos son una estrategia de gestión de ingresos muy positiva, tanto para la rentabilidad global de los hoteles como para la satisfacción de los huéspedes, por lo que los Directores de Recepción deben apoyar la implantación de precios dinámicos automatizados por parte del equipo de gestión de ingresos para asegurarse de que su property ofrece siempre tarifas competitivas y el mejor valor a los huéspedes.
Effective forecasting=more effective operational planning
Otra parte importante de la gestión moderna de ingresos es la previsión, en la que el equipo de gestión de ingresos utiliza sofisticados algoritmos en su RMS para predecir la demanda futura basándose en datos históricos, tendencias actuales de las reservas, análisis de mercado y otros factores externos como acontecimientos locales, condiciones económicas, variaciones estacionales, etc.
While this information is used in establishing the best price for each room, for the right guest, at the right time, it is also a very valuable tool for the Front Desk Manager, as it can help them make better, data-based decisions on important questions such as staffing, housekeeping schedules, hiring, etc. – all of which fall under the Front Desk Manager’s prevue and which will ensure smoother operations, reduce guest wait times and improve service quality. As you can see, effective revenue management leads to optimized operations, directly impacting the guest experience.
Better understanding of guest travel behaviors & needs
Revenue management requires a deep understanding of market segments and guest behavior, and by using this information, the Front Desk Managers can set more accurate expectations for guests and communicate more effectively. Whether it’s explaining the reasoning behind the room rates or setting the right expectations about availability and services, informed communication fosters trust and improves overall guest satisfaction.
Upselling and cross-selling
At the heart of revenue management is the deep analysis of property data, including booking trends, guest preferences and market dynamics. By combining revenue management data with guest data from the PMS and CRM, the Front Desk Manager can identify the opportunities for upselling and cross-selling, enhancing the guest’s stay while maximizing revenue. From upgrading to a suite with a better view to recommending a spa package, these offers should be tailored to the guest’s preferences to ensure that they are received as offers to personalize their stay, rather than sales pitches.
Esto nos lleva a un importante punto relacionado...
Personalized guest experiences
The Front Desk Manager can also use this data to offer personalized experiences to guests; whether it’s automatically booking a returning guest into their preferred room type or leaving a bottle of red wine (their favorite) in the room to thank them for their continued business, this level of personalization goes a long way in making guests feel valued and understood.
The involvement of the Front Desk Manager in the revenue management process can transform the guest experience in many positive ways; at the heart of this transformation is real-time data, provided by the RMS and other operational solutions, making the cooperation of the front desk and revenue management teams very important. From offering guests personalized experiences, offering room rates with better value using dynamic pricing, to improving operational efficiency and enhancing communication, the benefits of the two teams working together are tangible and impactful.
In the dynamic world of hospitality where guest satisfaction is paramount, the Front Desk Manager must embrace revenue management (and revenue management data) to ensure that the property remains profitable over the long-term, while also sustaining the highest level of customer satisfaction for every guest.
As you can see, each of these three roles are integral to the success of a property’s revenue management strategy.
So, I challenge each and every Hotel Manager, owner/operator and Front Desk Manager to make the most important move necessary to set your property up for future success: implement automated pricing technology at your property to support the implementation of data-backed, strategic revenue management at your property, today.
After all, if I could get my 83-year-old father excited about establishing an RMS-backed, automated, data-based pricing strategy at his BnB, why can’t (and why aren’t) you?
There’s absolutely nothing to lose and everything to win!
To discover how RoomPriceGenie can help your property increase your property’s profitability, start your free trial of our automated pricing solution today!
RoomPriceGenie is the easiest way to ensure that your rooms are priced right, every night. Purpose-built for the independent hotelier, RoomPriceGenie is fast to implement, intuitive to use and simple to understand.
In an uncertain world, it’s revenue that you can count on. To find out more about automated pricing, start your free trial today.
