EyeforTravel News: Revenue Management Feed

Design Hotels selects Rubicon for market intelligence and rate comparisons

Lindi — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 08:05:08 +0100

Design Hotels, which has its headquarters in Berlin, offers specialist knowledge from conceptual branding through to market trend consultancy and international representation. The member hotels are independently-owned.

On the decision to go ahead with MarketVision for its members and the revenue management team, Alexis Dobbelaere, Director of Revenue Distribution for Design Hotels said this data will enable them to efficiently control the pricing strategy distributed into the different channels.

"The amount of time being spent on mundane implementation work is very high"

Lindi — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:57:03 +0100

The latter frees up these resources to focus on strategically important issues to enhance a hotel's performance.

So which is the best way to address this?

Hotels can now manage Expedia bookings through Amadeus PMS

Lindi — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 08:06:12 +0100

The solution allows hotels to sell their rooms on Expedia direct from their Amadeus PMS.

Amadeus PMS now provides hotels with a single point from which they can manage their rates, availability and inventory on Expedia. This allows them to easily adjust room availability and pricing according to demand, and enables the use of dynamic pricing to optimise rate management and occupancy levels.

"Many hotel groups are re-thinking their current distribution set-up"

Lindi — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:04:50 +0100

Spending in 2008 will increase from $7.8 million year to date to roughly $14 million.

The major investments will be in the continued development of Trust|Booker 2.0 Internet booking engine and a new multi-lingual version of its Voyager CRS, which includes a fully integrated suite of customer relationship management (CRM) products.

Trust also expects to roll out additional interfaces to property management systems (PMS), revenue management systems (RMS) and direct connects Internet channels to further strengthen Trust's signature "one stop – distribute all" concept.

"Customer Profitability Analysis has become a logical extension of RM"

Lindi — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:46:55 +0100

Be it the perceived value of the hotel against its competitors or ensuring that a hotel isn't competing with its own prices through the other channels, these factors are quite critical in shaping up the pricing strategy.

Commenting on how consumers act differently when they are able to forecast, Millennium Hotels and Resorts' Regional Director Revenue Management Europe, Nayan Peshkar, says technology is revolutionising the way consumers choose and book hotels.

New technology platform offers channel management capabilities straight from the PMS

Lindi — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:22:23 +0100

With RezExchange, hotels can manage their GDS, CRS, ADS and branded website channels straight from the PMS, and will receive all reservations made through these channels directly into their PMS database. The single image inventory design allows for last room availability on all channels and eliminates the risk of overbooking.

RezExchange offers direct connectivity to small independent hotels, as well as hotel chains with their own chain code on the GDS.

"We will not permit any online agent to breach our promise"

Lindi — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 08:12:14 +0100

One of the speakers, Romain Saada, Director of Revenue Management, Shangri-La Hotel, Dubai, said his goal is to change the mindset of the head of departments on revenue management practices.

"I think our job is very much more complex. We also need to concentrate on reducing the cost per distribution channel," Saada told EyeforTravel.com's Ritesh Gupta in an interview.

Saada also spoke about RM practice, the areas which RM needs to focus upon and much more. Excerpts:

How to identify a poor distribution architecture in a hotel?

Lindi — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:59:19 +0100

The latter frees up these resources to focus on strategically important issues to enhance a hotel's performance.

So which is the best way to address this?

In order to know more about the same and even other relevant issues related to RM, EyeforTravel.com's Ritesh Gupta recently spoke to Chinmai Sharma, Vice President, Revenue Management, Wyndham Hotels and Resorts and Duncan Bramwell, Managing Director, Duncan Bramwell & Company. Excerpts:

On assigning responsibilities:

Trust introduces new version of its CRS for hotels

Lindi — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:31:33 +0100

The first key new feature of Trust|Voyager v.12 is an improved channel-specific rate and room type description. Voice agents using Trust|CRO, the CRS booking front-end customised for call center reservation handling, now see even more information specific to their selling process to empower them better answer detailed questions from guests and provide more upselling options at their fingertips during guest calls.

"Ability to override RM system's output is an important feature"

Lindi — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 07:53:44 +0100

At the same time, the industry professionals also feel that the revenue management discipline is undeniably constrained in terms of segmentation and other labelling methods due to limitations in human ability to process all of the information.

According to Brian Berry, Regional Director – RM, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, it is important to recognise that while systems have the ability to drill data down to the most minute, precise and detailed level, there is a threshold where that information becomes trivial and statistically insignificant.