It is no longer news that the hotel industry has suffered the worst decline in history. The resulting business failures are starting to make the news and most industry experts agree that it will be several years until the industry returns to anywhere near the health it had in 2019. While the global picture is still very gloomy, we are starting to see isolated upticks in reservations. However, whether it is traveler's slowly adjusting to the "new normal", or just pent up leisure demand, the booking patterns are different than ever before. And just like the periods following previous disruptions, the most aggressive and innovative hotels will gobble up all of this trickle of new travelers, leaving most hotels still staring at the horizon, looking for signs of life. Although there will be few winners and mostly losers during the early stages of the recovery, most hoteliers are still working with the exact same set of tools they had, pre-pandemic, including over half of the industry that uses no dedicated revenue optimization technology whatsoever.

So, we ask our panel experts: 1) For a hotel just getting started implementing a revenue optimization process, what technology and services are most essential, and how should they be selected? or 2) For a hotel with an established revenue optimization culture, what new tools have emerged that could be game-changers?

Michail Tzouvelekis
Michail Tzouvelekis
Director of Global Marketing, Fornova

In order to succeed, any hotel revenue optimization program has to be not only data-driven, but, at a time when hotels are more resource-constrained than ever before, it also has to deploy tools that are time-efficient and cost-effective.

 RMS – nice to have in 2021

Having been designed to increase rates in parallel to pace and demand going up, AI and Machine Learning revenue management technologies did not live up to the hype in the face of an unprecedented crisis, when the coronavirus swept the globe and decimated demand in the travel, tourism and hospitality industries earlier this year. They will ultimately learn, adapt and recover, but if 83% of the world's hotels can survive without them, so can yours – until you have enough business on the books (OTB) to justify the investment.

 BI – essential in 2021

Stop wasting time creating manual Excel reports and deploy a good Business Intelligence tool to automatically collect the data from all your hotel's disparate systems and revenue streams (PMS, CRS, F&B, etc.) into a single unified dashboard. By eliminating data silos and having better, faster, more accurate reporting, you will speed up decision making and increase collaboration across revenue, distribution, sales, marketing, operations and management teams.

3 questions to ask before you buy:

1.     Can it automatically generate pickup reports?

2.     Can I access it from multiple devices, e.g. on my tablet?

3.     Has it been developed with hotels in mind?

Rate Shopper – essential in 2021

Consider using a solution that not only tracks comp set rates, but crucially also monitors competitive visibility and guest reviews.

3 questions to ask before you buy: 

1.     Can I customize the guest point of origin (Point of Sale) based on my hotel's source markets?

2.     Does it show prices from Booking basic?

3.     Can I compare my competitors' OTA ranking and visibility?

Market Intent tracker – nice to have in 2021

Intent data (e.g. Google trends, OTA browsing history, etc) can indeed predict travel demand in normal market conditions, but right now many of us are window shopping on travel websites, daydreaming of the the day when board a plane to a sunny destination, instead of actually intending to travel or booking anything. This will change by this time next year, after we are all vaccinated, which is when such tools should become quite useful. Maybe something for your 2022 budget.

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