Over the last six years we have trained over 6,000 hoteliers in hotel revenue management, distribution and internet marketing strategies.
It still surprises us though that, in general (yes, there are exceptions, so please don't take offence), the knowledge on pricing techniques, forecasting and yield strategies is still quite low in the hotel industry.
Perhaps we have not yet gone entirely through the professionalization of our industry, with the business and hospitality elements still very much intertwined.
Time to wake up...
If we look at any other industries, we see a clear separation of disciplines around operations and strategy.
Take Ikea, for example, it has a team dedicated to measure the impact of the floor. Experts go around the stores to make sure the layout is optimized and the right products are put in display in the demo kitchen or living room environments.
This central team supports the operational team in achieving better results.
Nevetheless, we do acknowledge that there has been improvement in the hotel industry over the last few years. But we still notice - and not only in independent hotels - that deep knowledge of revenue and yield management is still missing.
Too often operational managers are put in charge of marketing and pricing strategies, which they steer based on their personal opinion, instead of going through an organized structural process of data collection, evaluation and decision making.
Neither do we see the impact of the decisions being structurally logged and tracked to use for future evaluation and next year's strategy.
To achieve a more solid ROI on an hotel asset investment, we have to really look at taking a different approach.
Revenue management or business development, as many companies like to call it, should be a driving force in the overall strategy of the hotel.
No longer should we do business with companies just because we always did, or because they called the hotel asking for a group quote. We have to take a scientific approach to evaluating how much each piece of business contributes to the bottom line.
A simple move beyond REVPAR, looking at NREVPAR and GOPPAR, is an important step for many hotels still to take.
We have put the fundamentals of revenue management on paper in our FREE eBook to help hotels guide through the basics and to get to the next level.
We go in great detail through topics such as pricing, forecasting, reporting, benchmarking and many more ...
NB: Click here to obtain our FREE Hotel Revenue Management eBook.
NB2:Wake up coffee image via Shutterstock.