Thon Hotels Boosts Profitability with Infor EzRMS

Part of the Olav Thon Group, Thon Hotels has more than 90 properties across Norway, Sweden, Belgium and The Netherlands. By offering a warm atmosphere at hotels run by knowledgeable staff who guarantee a high standard of service, the overarching ethos of the group is to ensure guests receive a positive experience every time they stay. To guarantee this positive guest experience, the group invests heavily in the business, not only in customer-facing front-of-house services but in vital back office processes and functions too.

In-line with how the industry is heading, the company took the decision to centralise its revenue function, moving from a model where each property had its own revenue or booking manager, to a centralised team of revenue managers to look after the entire group of hotels. Individual revenue managers had traditionally used the group’s Property Management System (PMS) for pricing and analysis, a solution that the newly-formed centralised team continued to use. It soon became apparent that whilst the PMS did help to a certain extent, it certainly wasn’t the best solution for the task.

Andrea Allergodt Sandberg, Thon Hotels regional revenue manager, explains: “We quickly discovered that the amount of information we had to process was simply too great for our existing solution to deal with. We were using our PMS for pricing and analytics but it wasn’t providing us with the functionality and insight we needed to optimise our revenue management. We’d moved to this new centralised way of working and our system simply wasn’t providing the capabilities we needed.”

In light of this, the business began the search for a dedicated revenue management system in 2018.

A centralised solution

Following a competitive tender process, Thon Hotels chose Infor® EzRMS, a powerful hotel revenue management software solution that automatically calculates demand and revenue forecasts, while recommending appropriate selling strategies. Deep-learning algorithms dynamically recognise patterns to ensure optimal and accurate business forecasts, pricing, and selling strategies to maximise yield and profit.

Andrea continues: “Not only did EzRMS provide the exact revenue management functionality we were looking for, but Infor demonstrated how the business really listens to its customers, taking on board feedback and actively developing additional capabilities that customers need. Additionally, EzRMS was the only solution we looked at that would enable us to include our function space in our revenue management activities at some point in the future.”

Unexpected interruptions

The new solution was implemented across most of Thon Hotels’ properties in 2019. The team was just beginning to use the system in earnest when the global pandemic struck.

As Andrea explains: “The team was relishing the prospect of getting to grips with the new system when business inevitably changed because of the pandemic. We had to close our properties, in-line with guidance, and this obviously meant that our revenue management plans had to be put on the back-burner.”

As the world emerged from the pandemic, so Thon Hotels had a chance to really get to work with EzRMS. Using a combination of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning, EzRMS adjusted vital algorithms to deliver accurate forecasts and therefore pricing strategies to reflect the ‘new normal’ of a post-pandemic world. This meant that Thon Hotels could benefit from the comprehensive, quality data and insight needed to meet the specific requirements of the business.

Andrea continues: “From the start of 2022, we had many new colleagues in the revenue management department. Although this meant they had to get used to a new system, it also meant they weren’t tied to old processes and methodologies. Our revenue managers were very receptive to working with the team at Infor to ensure the business could take full advantage of the benefits EzRMS can bring.”

A competitive advantage

Now implemented in over 50 of the group’s properties in Norway and Belgium, with the plan to onboard franchise properties in the not-too-distant future, EzRMS is a core component of Thon Hotels’ growth strategy, a strategy that has seen the group take market share in almost every area. Robust, effective decision-making, grounded in precise revenue forecasting, has helped the business to secure competitive traction, finding and seizing new opportunities, and informing long-term strategy.

Andrea explains: “EzRMS processes and analyses so much information that it would be impossible to do manually; it sees the bigger picture and takes into account even the smallest of details. What we now have is an efficient, effective and, most importantly, profitable revenue management function and we certainly couldn’t have successfully centralised our revenue function without EzRMS. From 2019 – 2022, we’ve seen a 13 % increase in RevPAR for our properties using EzRMS.”

“Not only has EzRMS eased the working day for the revenue team, but it’s challenged misconceptions across the organisation about what effective revenue management looks like and what it can achieve. In particular, it delivers a timely, accessible, visual representation of crucial business information to sales and management teams to show the precise revenue management data and insight that underpin truly data-driven decision-making.”

True partnership working

Andrea concludes: “The benefits of using EzRMS are clear to see in the improvements we’ve made to our revenue management function, but we also like working with Infor. You see your ideas and enhancement suggestions taken on board and incorporated into the solution. It’s a real working partnership; Infor listens to its customers and recognises that its software needs to evolve if it’s to continue to comprehensively support hospitality businesses in a rapidly changing industry, an evolution that’s proving invaluable to us as a business.”

About Infor

Infor is a global leader in business cloud software specialized by industry. We develop complete solutions for our focus industries. Infor's mission-critical enterprise applications and services are designed to deliver sustainable operational advantages with security and faster time to value. Over 60,000 organizations in more than 175 countries rely on Infor's 17,000 employees to help achieve their business goals. As a Koch company, our financial strength, ownership structure, and long-term view empower us to foster enduring, mutually beneficial relationships with our customers. Visit www.infor.com.

Christina Ledger
+1 312 662 2135