“New Times Call for New Tools”
Our global hospitality industry is facing its greatest challenge in modern history—and also its greatest opportunity for transformational change. It would seem 2020 dealt us all a losing hand, but there's still a game to be won. To survive—and thrive—hotels must now prepare to break down longstanding silos, think in radical new ways about guest value and the total guest experience, and take bold, strategic action toward profit optimization and commercial success across the hotel organization.
The pandemic has forced drastic changes to how we conduct business. This new reality will force us all to do more with less. Reorganized and consolidated hotel organizations have made revenue management resources and time more valuable than ever. No longer are hotel revenue managers responsible for a single property, or a handful of properties within a hotel group, but many are now responsible for a cluster of properties and expected to make strategic revenue decisions for up to a dozen—or more—hotels every day. But what does this renewed focus on consolidation and efficiency mean for the commercial operations, as well as the function of a revenue manager of a hotel today?
The human element is still vital, but hotels must now look to invest in key automated technologies to drive greater operational efficiencies. A machine-learning revenue management system (RMS) that can implement tactical decisions and automatically distribute rates and inventory controls will free up talented revenue managers to better execute long-term commercial strategies.
What IDeaS Does Differently
At IDeaS, our focus in our RMS platforms has been to enable the solution to serve as your reliable radar, reacting quickly to produce appropriate controls during the disruption and observing and proactively responding as business begins to recover.
We recognize the recovery trajectory will vary for individual properties, even within the same market. Hotels have needed to make hard pivots to leverage their property assets in novel ways. A sharp focus on transitioning segment mix and rapidly changing source markets has allowed some hotels to buoy domestic leisure business where they traditionally have depended on domestic business travelers. Other hotels have taken a hard look at their event space to increase socially-distanced wedding bookings by offering shorter lengths of stay and local packages.
IDeaS has taken steps to leverage key analytics capabilities to react quickly to what is really happening and ignore irrelevant data. We know there is a delicate balance to strike in analyzing data from this period. It's important that an RMS excludes data from the demand disruption and doesn't use it to forecast the recovery period. At the same time, the RMS must be able to see the evidence of disruption and that the recovery has begun.
To account for this, IDeaS' systems have been carefully refined—and are regularly recalibrated—to guide our clients through the downturn and onward into the phases of recovery to come. Our RMS solutions react as booking patterns, demand, market pricing and price sensitivity changes, and they are designed to price optimally—by room type and beyond the guest room—even in times of very low demand.
A Time to Transform Revenue Management
With the right leadership, hotels can rise from these ashes stronger than ever before. I believe now is the time to rethink the hospitality industry, reinvent your hotel, and hit the reset button to transform revenue management as never before, finally achieving the right business mix, the right channels, and the right intersections of talent and technology. These strange new times call for a new breed of revenue manager—along with the revenue technology they use—to lead their organization's path to commercial success in the boom years to come.
By breaking out of the siloed ways of doing business and embracing the automated tools available to improve efficiency and increase profitability across your entire organization, hoteliers can remain competitive as travel resumes and the industry slowly marches toward recovery. Hoteliers and commercial leaders have an opportunity to evolve and set themselves up for future success, today.
