I had the honor of hosting the HFTP webinar, “Revenue Recovery Trends: Insights and Action Items From New Revenue Teams and Systems” to share two pieces of research Revenue Analytics created in partnership with HSMAI. Featuring insights from more than 30 interviews with Revenue Management leaders, this important research paves the way for hospitality industry professionals to thrive in the COVID recovery and beyond.
Working with hoteliers in the throes of the pandemic, we noticed substantial changes to how Revenue Management teams are structured, and how they work with other departments and disciplines. This led to the creation of the “The New Revenue Team” white paper.
As the recovery took center stage in the spring of this year, hoteliers began preparing for a travel boom. Coupled with new team structures and other changes fueled by the pandemic, new requirements for RMSs emerged.
“The New RMS: A Buying Guide” is the product of these new revenue technology priorities. The guide explores current and desired RMS capabilities while illuminating which of them matter most for different types of users.
What we learned from interviewing Revenue Management leaders helped us define requirements for the RMS of the future in the guide.
We asked the webinar participants if they believe onboarding a modern RMS will allow hoteliers to capture more revenue opportunity and drive efficiency – and 100% agreed.
Over the course of this research, we realized the pandemic had expedited three significant trends we’d begun to see taking shape even before COVID-19 uprooted the industry:
1. Revenue Management moves from on-property to above-property
Before the pandemic, we were noticing single-property Directors of Revenue Management were being replaced by cluster RMs and central RM teams. It just didn’t make sense anymore for RMs to only focus on one property at a time.
We asked the 45 live webinar attendees who their company’s most prevalent RMS user is, and 61% answered the Multitasking Revenue Manager.
The Multitasking Revenue Manager requires a native multi-property workflow in their RMS. Whereas single-property DORMs deep dive into complex data points, the RM who manages multiple properties doesn’t have time to sift through every piece of data.
N2Pricing™, Revenue Analytics’ modern RMS, stack ranks opportunities to show RMs where their time is best spent. A fast and efficient workflow allows them to quickly identify revenue opportunities across their portfolios.
While RMSs focus on putting a lot of data at the fingertips of the RM, they are often not the decision maker – that task falls to the General Manager.
Similar to the Multitasking RM, the GM is constantly pulled in a thousand different directions – but for the GM, Revenue Management is only one of them. GMs are in dire need of at-a-glance metrics to understand pricing recommendations and gain confidence to make fast decisions.
N2Pricing reduces noise and cost with our GM orientation, providing intuitive rationale for every price recommendation.
2. RM teams partner with sales and marketing on strategies to drive demand
A recurring theme we heard over the course of our interviews was how Revenue Managers and their teams are being forced to do more with less. While it’s never easy to do your job well with fewer resources, this did give way to a positive consequence – the breakdown of disciplinary silos.
RMs are working much more closely with their partners in sales and marketing – with some departments even combining to create directors and VPs overseeing both sales and revenue teams.
This collaboration comes with major advantages, especially for strategizing demand-driving tactics such as implementing new systems and channels, and exploring new promotion opportunities. When RMs have a keen understanding of what’s driving sales and marketing revenue, and vice versa, their combined knowledge fuels profit optimization.
These new team structures and interdisciplinary synergies mean more people will likely have seats in the RMS – especially when it comes to reporting.
RMSs need to be intuitive and show key metrics both RMs, executives, and their sales and marketing counterparts can quickly understand and digest.
N2Pricing seamlessly integrates with any BI or visualization tool. Its flexible reporting simplifies data and makes it accessible for team members with a stake in Revenue Management, even if they don’t work directly on the RM team. This empowers leaders to make fast, impactful decisions without sifting through mountains of data points.
3. RM systems are moving from decision support to decision automation
One of the most common myths we hear about RMSs is that a great system can replace a human. This could not be farther from the truth. What a modern RMS can do is remove the tactical burden from the Revenue Manager, so they can focus more on strategy.
In fact, we asked the webinar attendees what skillsets are most important when hiring revenue team members – and 64% of them said strategic thinking.
Tactical decisions, such as “What should my price be next Tuesday?” or “Should I raise my pricing for this sporting event?” can be answered by a modern RMS. That frees up the RM to do things only humans can do – drive demand through strategy.
The RM is now available to explore untapped resources, and get more involved with asset management, finance, and other disciplines to increase profitability.
To do this effectively, RMs need an RMS that doesn’t optimize for revenue – but instead optimizes for profit. It doesn’t matter how much your revenue increases if your costs increase more.
If your hotel sees an uptick in staffing or other costs, it may not have an impact on revenue, but it will certainly have implications for profit. N2Pricing has profit optimization at the core, so RMs can see the full picture, quickly, to make decisions that will benefit all aspects of the business.
The modern Revenue Manager deserves a modern RMS built by a team that understands how times have changed – and continues to innovate in partnership with revenue teams.
Schedule your demo today to see how N2Pricing’s better forecasting, intuitive multi-property workflow, and profit optimization will empower your revenue team to outprice the competition.
