Finance

Why hoteliers should not allow the OTAs to hijack their group business

The question is, should hoteliers allow OTA customers to "trick the system" and allow group bookings by enabling multiple reservations for same stay period by the same customer. The question of group reservations is more important than ever since group demand - both corporate and SMERF - is expected to bounce back in 2023.

View by Max Starkov, Hospitality & travel technologist and digital strategist, Hospitality Net

OTA Group Bookings - yes or no?

An interesting "dilemma" and an indication of the state of the relationship between hotels and OTAs, when we discuss whether getting a certain form of business is good for both partners.

View by Harald Bindeus, Commercial Leader | Marketing, Revenue Management, Sales |, Global Hotel Revenue Solutions

Distribution and Connectivitiy

A group booking regulation clause for both the Hotel's and OTA's interest

The reason we qualify a reservation as a "group booking" is because the number of rooms booked requires special booking conditions to be applied by the Hotel, to prevent the risk of incurring massive revenue and profit loss for late cancellations of the bulk of rooms that cannot be replaced to the last minute.

View by Silvia Cantarella, Revenue Management Expert and founder, Revenue Acrobats

How to avoid the pricing data overload conundrum in hospitality?

Klaus Kohlmayr, Chief Evangelist & Development Officer @ IDeaS estimates that a typical hotel has to make roughly five million pricing decisions every year and that it is not humanly possible for any revenue manager to get every decision right, every day, without the support of an automated system like a Revenue Management System (RMS). Yet, less than 10% of independent hotels have an RMS in place.

View by Max Starkov, Hospitality & travel technologist and digital strategist, Hospitality Net

Three Recommendations to Avoid Analysis Paralysis

In the next five years, the world will have increased its data from 36 Zettabytes to 163 Zettabytes. How much data is that? If a byte were the size of a grain of rice, 163 zettabytes would fill 163 Pacific Oceans! That's a massive amount of data. The hotel industry is not immune to that deluge, and revenue managers everywhere are faced with the challenge of dealing with it. Here are three recommendations:

View by Klaus Kohlmayr, Chief Evangelist and Development Officer, IDeaS

Take the best business decision with data stories

In economics, one of the most well-known concepts is the Law of diminishing returns. What the law states is: As an investment in a particular area increases, the rate of profit from that investment, after a certain point, will decrease. Translated in Data analysis, one does not need to have 100% of the information to make the right decision. 

View by Vassilis Syropoulos, Founder & CEO, Juyo

How to avoid analysis paralysis in a data-driven world

More than ever data is available to help shed light in dark corners and to support making high impact decisions. When all goes well revenue managers will feel armed with the right data to check assumptions, gather insights and align teams towards profitable outcomes. With the quantity (and quality) of data sources increasing it can get daunting though. 

View by Niki Van den Broeck, Product Manager, Lighthouse

Lessons learned in helping hoteliers navigate the world of data and insights

Tipping from data-driven decision-making into analysis paralysis is common, but not unavoidable. As Scott’s original post says, having a strong filter on what NOT to analyse is important. Here are some other lessons we’ve learned in helping hoteliers navigate the world of data and insights.

View by Alex Macoun, Chief of Strategic Operations, SiteMinder