Leer hoe u uw inkomsten kunt verhogen
In onze nieuwste gids nemen we een kijkje in de keuken en bieden we de belangrijkste informatie die elke onafhankelijke hotelier moet weten over revenue management. Krijg antwoorden op de volgende onderwerpen en meer.
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Revenue Management Essentiële onderdelen voor zelfstandige hotels
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Concurrenten: Wie zijn ze en hoe kunt u hun prijs bepalen?
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Kortingen: Wat aan te bieden en wanneer om inkomsten te maximaliseren
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Forecasting: How to Predict Future Bookings & Price Strategically
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Overboeking: Hoe de bezettingsgraad maximaliseren zonder te verhuizen
of begin hieronder te lezen
5
Competitors: Knowing Who They Are and How to Price Against Them
There’s an ancient saying: “Keep your friends close; keep your enemies closer.” Credited to Sun Tzu, a Chinese military general and philosopher who lived more than 2,500 years ago, the saying remains relevant today.
In the hospitality industry, we don’t think of our competitors as enemies, of course – they’re more like friendly rivals. But we do compete with them for business.
Keeping them close means understanding their strengths and weaknesses relative to your property. It also means monitoring their offerings and pricing. This will help you know how to position your property effectively and attract more bookings and revenue.
Do You Know Who Your Competitors Are?
Your competitors might not be who you think. Traditionally, hotels identify competitors based on the main criteria travelers use to decide where to stay. This includes:
- Locatie: Properties in a similar geographic region, close to the same attractions, activities, beach, shopping, entertainment, or businesses.
- Property type: Properties of a certain size or design, such as boutique hotels, hostels, or hotels with contemporary or traditional design.
- Category: Properties in the same segment or star category, such as economy or luxury, three-star or four-star.
- Prijzen: Properties that offer similar room types at similar prices.
- Facilities: Properties with comparable services, such as a restaurant, bar, pool, spa, and function space.
- Target markets: Properties that cater to specific traveler types, such as leisure, corporate, families, couples, or groups.
- Guest ratings: Properties that share similar guest ratings on Google, Tripadvisor, and OTAs (online travel agencies).
Competitive Benchmarking: Different Strokes for Different Folks
Based on these shared characteristics, the hotel selects about five properties as its primary competitive set, or comp set. Then it decides how to position its pricing relative to them, a process known as competitive price benchmarking.
Some hotels tie their pricing to just one or two competitors. When the competitor’s rates go up or down, the hotel adjusts its own rates by a similar amount to maintain the desired price differential.
However, hotels can differ significantly in terms of:
- Occupancy patterns. What if your competitors are almost sold out, but you still have many rooms left to sell?
- Revenue objectives. What if your priority is to build occupancy, whereas your competitors want to build average rate?
- Revenue expertise. How do you know if your competitors follow smart revenue management practices? They might be just winging it.
To blindly follow competitors is a risky proposition. Your pricing strategies should be as unique and individualized as your property.
Navigating an Evolving Competitive Landscape
Moreover, to limit benchmarking to five properties doesn’t reflect today’s diverse competitive landscape. Hotels compete for bookings with more properties than ever before due to:
- More choices. Travelers don’t limit searches to the five hotels in your comp set, so why would you? They may explore dozens of options, including independent hotels, branded properties, and short-term rentals.
- More search options. OTAs make it easy to compare offerings by displaying various accommodation types on the same page. Travelers can filter searches using a broad array of criteria, from location to amenities to eco-friendly practices.
- More mobility. With apps like Google Maps and Uber, and improvements to public transportation, it’s easier to get around in a destination, making travelers more open to staying within a broader geographical area.
- Dynamic competition. Hotels compete with different properties for different types of business, including:
- Traveler types (individual, family, couple, etc.)
- Market segments (corporate, group, etc.)
- Booking channels (OTA, direct, wholesale, etc.)
- Times of year (E.g., low season vs. high season)
- Days of the week (E.g., weekends vs. weekdays)
For all these reasons, if you’re only paying attention to a few competitors – or not paying attention at all – you’re likely mispricing your rooms and missing out on revenue opportunities.
5 Ways to Price More Competitively
A more effective approach to pricing that reflects the realities of today’s competitive playing field involves five key strategies:
- Benchmark against a broad range of competitors.
- Include both direct competitors and rate leaders in your comp set.
- Position pricing against the market average rather than specific competitors.
- Incorporate your occupancy and booking pace into pricing decisions.
- Update your pricing frequently in response to changing demand conditions.
By monitoring a more comprehensive comp set, hoteliers can better understand market demand and traveler price sensitivity, positioning rates to capture the most valuable bookings.
So Many Competitors, So Little Time
This begs the question, with so many competitors, how can hoteliers “keep them close”? This challenge is especially acute for time-strapped operators of small, independent hotels that do not have a full-time revenue manager.
Fortunately, technology has come a long way. Automated revenue management software provides hotels with unprecedented access to competitive pricing data, making it easier to benchmark against a diverse array of properties.
The software monitors competitor pricing, factors in the hotel’s occupancy and rate parameters, and calculates the optimal daily rates, updating them automatically in the PMS. The hotel needs only to check in from time to time to ensure everything is running as intended.
How to Gain a Competitive Edge with Automated Pricing
Not all revenue management software is the same, however. Here are some key features offered by RoomPriceGenie that ensure your pricing is customized to meet the unique needs and aspirations of your property.
- An Extended Comp Set. We collect rate data from 10 properties in your area, selecting a mix of direct competitors, hotels with savvy pricing strategies, and, if desired, short-term rentals. We also determine the weighting of each property on your pricing.
- Recommended Pricing. Based on your average rate over the past year, we establish a daily base rate and then adjust it according to the following criteria:
- Market Factor: The average percentage by which the comp set has increased or decreased their rates.
- Occupancy/Pickup Factor: How many rooms the hotel has left to sell and the number of days to arrival.
- Price Settings: The price floor and ceiling for each room type, along with any other parameters specified by the property.
Based on this data, our algorithms generate a Recommended Price for each room type. We then compare these rates to the sell rates in the PMS to indicate if current pricing is too high or low.
- Choice of Mode. Hotels can opt for Auto-Pilot mode, where pricing is adjusted automatically in the PMS, or Co-Pilot mode, where the user can review the Recommended Price and make adjustments before uploading it to the PMS.
- Dynamic Pricing. To ensure pricing is always optimal, data is updated several times a day, every day, including weekends, evenings, and holidays.
- Customized Setup. During onboarding, we work with your property to determine settings such as:
- Weightings: How much each competitor and factor affects your pricing.
- Aggressiveness level: How aggressively you wish to push rates.
- Target occupancy: Your desired daily occupancy.
- Rate parameters. The minimum rates, maximum rates, and pricing increments for each room type and rate plan.
- Pricing Adjustments. If preferred, the hotel can set fixed rates or override the Recommended Price. For example, you can specify that pricing be 10% higher on Saturdays, 10% lower on Sundays, and 30% higher during a special event.
- Booking Windows. Hoteliers can also set special pricing based on lead times, such as reducing rates by 10% starting four weeks prior to the arrival date. By default, prices are reduced one day prior to arrival to capture-last minute bookings.
- Monthly Strategy Calls. Our revenue management experts offer insights and recommendations to help maximize your bookings and revenue.
- Lighthouse Integration. For Rate Insight subscribers, data is displayed directly within our dashboard, eliminating the need to toggle between screens.
Note that some of these features are only available to subscribers of our Advanced and Professional plans.
It’s Time to Cozy Up to Your Competitors
In the digital age, the competitive marketplace is more crowded than ever, yet maintaining competitive pricing is easier than ever. Aided by automated pricing, independent hotels can keep all their competitors close, drawing from the insights to grow average rate, occupancy, and market share.
To learn more about hotel pricing and revenue management, check out our Inhoud Bibliotheek.
Over RoomPriceGenie
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.
Inhoud
5. Competitors: Knowing Who They Are and How to Price Against Them
- Do You Know Who Your Competitors Are?
- Competitive Benchmarking: Different Strokes for Different Folks
- Navigating an Evolving Competitive Landscape
- 5 Ways to Price More Competitively
- So Many Competitors, So Little Time
- How to Gain a Competitive Edge with Automated Pricing
- It’s time to Cozy Up to Your Competitors
Kortingen: Wat aan te bieden en wanneer om inkomsten te maximaliseren
