44 Edition 2020

44th | Vol 29 | 2020 | www.hotelier-indonesia.com 15
An advanced RMS not only generates prices that adapt to market
changes, but anticipates these variations in advance. In a competitive
hotel market, slight pricing changes can have a significant
impact on demand. Therefore, any hotelier operating without systems
that can analytically decipher the impacts of a specific price
change (i.e., $7 higher or lower) on occupancy and the resulting
revenue benefit (or lack thereof) for their property, is operating at a
disadvantage.
Reduce operational costs
To help avoid turning away higher-rated business, accurate data
that highlights who their most valuable customers are is essential.
To properly understand the value of a guest, a holistic view of a
customer’s lifetime contribution must be obtained, not just their
room-rate spend. Data from all transaction systems should be
integrated to provide a true picture of a guest’s preferred activities
and their overall value to also include ancillary value: food service
to the day spa usage, guest rooms to gift shop purchases, the cost
of the booking channel, etc. By using an RMS to help identify their
most valuable guests, hoteliers can deploy strategies to make those
guests feel welcome and recognised, to inspire long-term loyalty
(and direct bookings!).
ELIMINATE PRICING ERRORS,
MAKE PROFIT FOCUSED DECISIONS
In general, a typical hotel will make roughly five million pricing decisions
every year. Yes, $5 MILLION. The sheer volume of data that
requires consolidation, analysis and action means it is not humanly
possible for any revenue manager to get every decision right, every
day. Powered by sophisticated revenue science to produce accurate
pricing decisions and inventory controls, an automated RMS is
critical in the age of big data. Forward-looking, predictive analytics
embedded in today’s RMSs help hoteliers uncover emerging trends
and identify more profitable opportunities earlier.
Maximising the guest experience while minimising operational
costs, including labour costs, is perhaps the Holy Grail for most
hoteliers. Accurate demand forecasting provided by an RMS can
greatly enhance a hotel’s labour scheduling and purchasing decisions.
Through integrating forecasts across a hotel’s operations,
hoteliers can use the forecast to inform their staffing decisions
and account for periods of higher or lower demand. Once demand
forecasting data is made available, staffing managers can
determine which areas are most affected by the number of guests
staying in the hotel. The number of occupants a hotel carries can
directly influence housekeeping needs, the number of staff needed
on the front desk to check guests in and out, the number of servers
required in restaurants and valets to park cars, etc.
Another factor to consider is food and beverage, a large source of
potential waste for hotels, especially when it comes to those items
with an expiration date. Knowing when there will be periods of high
and low demand, as well as from which segments will be the key
consumers of these perishable items, will help hoteliers ensure
they order the products at the right time and avoid costly spoilage.
Improve the value of your hotel
Increased revenue leads to higher cash flow, from giving the hotel
greater day-to-day liquidity, to having money in the bank generating
interest and leveraging return on capital. Driving brand value,
as well as competitor set performance are both key to asset assessment.
The additional revenue delivered by the proper use of an
RMS and strategies directly impacts a hotel’s bottom line, making
it an essential tool for increasing a hotel’s valuation—a keystone in
any owner or asset manager’s lens, in particular at a time of investment,
refinancing or sale.
To learn more about how your hotel can benefit from using an
advanced, automated RMS in 2020, please visit: www.ideas.com