One of the benefits of building and hosting enterprise software in a multi-tenant cloud environment is the ability to release new updates and enhancements at any point, pushing them to all of your users at once, rather than building completely new versions of software and forcing users to "upgrade."

At Duetto, we take full advantage of the fact that we're true multi-tenant cloud. We can release new updates and enhancements at any time, pushed to all of our customers at once, and with no downtime. It beats building new versions of software and having to ask users to upgrade all the time.

But there's the small stuff, and then the big stuff. We release our gamechanging (no pun intended) enhancements — our major new products and features — quarterly, because they take more time to build and we take more time to be diligent.

Today is the official date of our 2018 Fall Release. While the new features will only affect Duetto users, our Product team enjoys giving regular peeks behind the curtain to anyone that might be interested. We're working on solving real challenges and pain points to drive profitability for hotels and casinos, and often those solutions are aimed at broader industry-wide problems. So by sharing what we're developing for our customers, we hope to also create new relationships so that we can help all hotels and casinos run more profitable businesses.

With that said, here's a glimpse into the highlights of Duetto's new tools and features, coming today.

New Toggle Helps Hotels More Accurately Price by Room Type.

Being able to forecast demand and dynamically yield each of your room types independently of each other is crucial. You know there are times when your suites are in higher demand, or when the majority of guests are asking for rooms with two queen beds, for example. But are you sure you're charging the right premium for these options? In some cases, are you giving away more rooms than you are upselling?

A new enhancement called Room Type Pricing Flexibility now gives hoteliers the ability to toggle the order of operations in which rates are calculated, weighting either segment or room type differentials first or second depending on the hotel's unique demands.

New Group Forecast Features Improve Displacement Analysis.

Helping hotels and casinos with group revenue management has been a major focus for Duetto in 2018.

To start, forecasting group business has traditionally been extremely painful for hotels. They often don't have the right visibility into the group sales funnel, such as an accurate picture of prospects, tentative groups and contracted groups on the books. So Duetto's new group forecast module splits your group business into these three buckets, then takes in your hotel's historical conversion rates to help determine a "wash" percentage.

With this increased visibility into your total group pipeline, including the number of contracts that will most likely convert, hotels will now know how many groups to actually sign and what rates to offer. While currently in beta at the moment, you'll see this available across the board very soon.

Additionally, for BlockBuster users managing groups that request high-demand days, sales directors now see "Alternate Stay Date Recommendations" and are able to quote in real-time alternative dates that meet said demand and may work better within the group's budget.

Alternate stay dates help hotels minimize displacement because you can recommend to group organizers the optimal dates that meet a group's needs, and don't displace transient room revenue.

Put Guest and Transaction Data into Action.

Personalization is the future, and probably should have been here a long time ago. But hotels are often left wondering how to take the first step, because the void in which all your data is floating around is scary to tackle. So it's exciting to announce new features to help hotels not only manage the data that exists, but also start putting personalization into action.

Today, Duetto released a feature called "Loyalty Rate Lookup" that allows your booking engine to obtain a loyalty member's ID and quickly find a personalized offer or tailored rate based on that individual's preferences and value to your hotel.

In addition, we're partnering closely with Facebook to allow hotels to show dynamic, real-time prices in their Facebook ads. Until now, Facebook ads have been static, not based on real-time supply and demand or true user search behavior, meaning that users who clicked on an ad in their feed would often not find the rate or availability at the hotel's booking engine.

Plenty of more features are coming to you today, so if you're a Duetto user, don't be alarmed at all the new revenue capabilities you have. If you're not a Duetto user but want to learn more, please contact us here.

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