Revenue management used to mean one thing: optimizing room revenue by managing pricing, inventory, and distribution while demand shifts. That’s still true today, but as the discipline has evolved, so too have the capabilities needed to support those decisions.
In our global survey of 450 senior revenue decision-makers, we set out to better understand how accommodation operators approach revenue management today.
The survey, conducted by Sapio Research on behalf of RoomPriceGenie, explored pricing and forecasting practices, operational challenges, leadership, technology, and collaboration across a range of property types, from independent hotels and groups to hostels and holiday parks.
We compiled the results in our latest report, the 2026 State of Revenue Management in Hospitality, which is filled with industry data, insights, and strategies for taking your own revenue management practices to the next level.
From Gut Feel to Strategic: Four Main Approaches to Revenue Management
One of the key questions we asked in the survey was, “Which best describes your pricing process?” Based on their answers, respondents were grouped into four tiers.
These tiers provide a helpful way to benchmark where your property is today and identify opportunities to strengthen your own revenue management practices.
- Instinct-Driven: Pricing is set manually based on experience, gut feeling, or fixed seasonal rates. (14% of sample)
- Structured: Pricing is reviewed regularly using spreadsheets and historical data, with limited automation. (29% of sample)
- System-Assisted: Pricing is supported by a revenue management system (RMS) that automates updates and informs decisions with data. (36% of sample)
- Strategic: Revenue management is a strategic function, with profitability focus, cross-departmental collaboration, and scenario-based forecasting. (21% of sample)
The Strategic tier embraces the practices typically associated with more advanced revenue management. However, operators are encouraged to adopt the practices that make sense for the scale, complexity, and commercial priorities of their business.
When we cross-referenced the four tiers against other survey questions, we discovered that they predict far more than you might expect. Here are four standout findings.
1. More Mature Operators Review Strategy and Forecast More Often
The higher the revenue management tier, the more frequently operators tend to review pricing strategy and forecast demand.
Among Instinct-Driven operators, for example, 24% review pricing strategy monthly or more often. In the Strategic tier, that rises to 47%.
Forecasting follows a similar pattern. Twenty-nine percent of Instinct-Driven operators forecast at least monthly, compared with 50% of Strategic operators.
Interestingly, greater automation doesn’t mean operators spend less time thinking about pricing strategy. Quite the opposite: operators with the most automation review their pricing strategy roughly twice as often as those pricing primarily by instinct.
2. Revenue Management Doesn’t Always Get Easier as It Matures
Moving up the tiers doesn’t necessarily make revenue management easier – at least not right away.
Just 18% of properties in the Structured tier described gathering the information needed to make a pricing decision as quick and straightforward, compared with 33% in the Instinct-Driven tier and 47% in the Strategic tier.
Structured-tier operators find information-gathering more difficult because they track more inputs but still do much of the work manually with spreadsheets. Instinct-Driven operators simply manage less information, which is a different kind of “easy.”
Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that 55% of operators in both the Instinct-Driven and Structured tiers say their operational teams lack confidence in interpreting revenue data. That falls to 37% in the System-Assisted tier and 38% in the Strategic tier.
3. Whatever the Size or Structure, Someone Needs to Own Revenue Management
As revenue management matures, responsibility for pricing also becomes more specialized.
Operators in the higher two tiers are more likely to assign primary responsibility for pricing management to a dedicated revenue manager or revenue management team, whereas those in the lower two tiers are more likely to assign responsibility to the general manager or owner.
For smaller properties, which tend to cluster in the lower tiers, it can be hard to justify a dedicated revenue manager – and that’s okay. What’s important is that someone with the right authority, skills, and time steps up to take ownership of revenue management.
This helps ensure revenue management becomes an ongoing, consistent discipline rather than an occasional task that gets overlooked when staff are busy.
4. Automation Drives Efficiency, but Human Expertise Is Still Required
Technology is another clear dividing line between the tiers.
Operators that use an RMS – most commonly those in the System-Assisted and Strategic tiers – report greater confidence across multiple aspects of revenue management than operators relying primarily on manual pricing and spreadsheets.
That includes confidence in interpreting revenue data, maximizing revenue potential, and overall revenue management capability.
An RMS doesn’t replace human judgment, however. By automating routine pricing tasks and bringing market information together, it frees hoteliers to spend more time on the strategic decisions that technology can’t make for them.
Find Out Which Tier Your Property Is in
In summary, the survey indicates that, as revenue management matures, operators forecast and review pricing strategy more frequently, establish clearer ownership of revenue management within the business, and make greater use of automation.
Operators in the higher tiers report greater confidence in interpreting revenue data, in their revenue management capabilities, and in their ability to maximize revenue potential.
The takeaway is that revenue management maturity isn’t defined by any one practice. Stronger processes, clearer ownership, better technology, and more frequent strategic review work together.
And operators of any size or type can strengthen their revenue management by adopting these practices in ways that make sense for their business.
To find out where your property sits within the four revenue management tiers, take the quiz here and download the report. Then learn practical tips for strengthening your approach.
To learn how RoomPriceGenie can help your property increase your property’s profitability, start your free trial of our automated pricing solution today!
