The Next Big Revenue Management Innovation

Owners:

• Why is profit so low?
• Why is the cost of reservations so high?
• How can we do less commissionable business to save money?
• What am I getting for my marketing fee?
• Everyone’s hand is in my pocket!

Revenue management leaders are under a lot of pressure.

“Do more with less” may have been an energizing mantra at a simpler time, but now…not so much.

Leaders and teams need help. And Revenue Management System (RMS) providers should be stepping up in a big way.

But have RMSs delivered the breakthrough innovation that’s sorely needed?

The bare minimum

Not according to one CRO who commented in HSMAI’s buying guide, “Rethinking the RMS for the Travel Recovery & Beyond”:

“Outdated technology is just the reality. We’re one of the biggest industries that has had the least innovation.”

Sandy Chun, Vice President of Revenue Management and asset optimization for Engage Hospitality noted:

“I don’t know what it is, but I think hotel systems tend to be the last ones to catch up to the rest of the world. As much as I love the systems that are out there, there’s a lot of room for improvement.”

Sure, RMS providers are:

• helping hotels figure out how to deal with pandemic-era data
• downsizing products so clients can better afford them
• tweaking modules to make them more robust

This assistance is important and well-intended, but it’s also the bare minimum. It’s tinkering at the margins. And it’s not nearly enough given the big, burly challenges revenue management teams face.

They are working on a faster horse when teams really need a car instead.

What is that car?

Is it so-called “real-time updates?” Or attribute-based pricing?

Nope.

The transformative leap in innovation that will slash costs, increase efficiency, and accelerate profit is:

An above-property management RMS.

Here’s why…

The big shift to clusters

It’s more clustered than ever.

Perhaps the most fundamental shift of the last decade is the trend toward above property management.

This shift has been driven by cost containment, efficiency, and talent pool pressures – and it’s a safe bet those forces will be ominous features on the hospitality landscape for the foreseeable future.

Today, 1 RM with 5, 15, 25 hotels is the norm while single-property DORMs are nearly extinct.

The problem?

Legacy RMSs were built exclusively for the needs of the 1-hotel revenue manager with a single, large, complex property to manage (often a city center or resort) where every decision is high stakes.

These single-property revenue managers had expert knowledge of the local market and operated outside the constant time constraints that above-property managers face today.

The result?

Legacy RMSs are not only ill-equipped to support above-property managers – they are often working at cross-purposes.

For example, today’s RMSs prize:

• Diving deeply into a single property from the very start vs. an above-property manager’s need to login and be shown what property to focus on first, second, third, etc.

• Providing a huge dump of as much data as possible vs. an above-property manager’s need to quickly identify and understand the most significant data points, actionable opportunities, and to dive in deeper only when needed.

• Providing strict oversight and granular control over every decision vs. an above-property manager’s need to automate all but the most critical decisions.

Here’s what revenue management leaders shared about the above-property problem for HSMAI’s RMS guide:

“Everyone is looking for a system that requires less human intervention so our analysts can take on more properties and work more efficiently.”

—Eric Gravelle, VP of Revenue Management, Diamond Resorts International

“I’m 1 person with 14 hotels. I just don’t have time to pull all the levers. We need more automation.”

—Mark Creger, VP of Revenue, Stoney Creek Hotels

“If you build to the individual hotel, it doesn’t serve the cluster.”

—Nicole Young, CRME, Sr. Corporate Director of Global Revenue Management, Rosewood Hotel Group

“The ease with which you can look at different properties has often been overlooked by current platforms.”

—Dana Cariss, VP of Revenue Strategy, CoralTree Hospitality

Swimming upstream

Revenue managers are bright, scrappy heroes who make the most of imperfect resources.

Jennifer Schneider, VP of RM at Radisson, said of her central RM team:

“They know what to look at, where to go, how to figure it out, how to reconfigure it.”

Angie Bartell, Director of Revenue Management and Ecommerce for Bartell hotels added:

“I had 25 properties. Did I work on each one every day? No. You need to determine where your time is best spent. Then be organized, have a plan, and a support system.”

Clearly, a lot of dedicated, resourceful, whip smart revenue managers are muscling through despite the obstacles created by their RMSs.

But they are having to swim upstream, against the current of single-property tech.

Imagine what the awesome revenue managers of the world could achieve if their RMS supported them? If they had an RMS purpose-built for large and diverse portfolios?

That’s where N2Pricing™ by Revenue Analytics comes in. Connect with an expert on our team today to learn more about the only modern RMS built for above-property revenue managers.