SoftHotel

Problem: Property A - Missing opportunities to increase rates or occupancy because of dynamically changing conditions.

Solution: ChannelMgr with automated rate triggers, based on occupancy and high occupancy auto pilot.

Property A is an airport property located in a city with diverse weather conditions affecting airport traffic during several months of the year; months that represent the property’s high season.  When an airport affecting condition occurred it affected the guests already in the hotel, as well as distressed the passengers that appeared at the front desk as quickly as the hotel’s multiple vans could transport them.  With the property’s staff engaged in servicing guests, it was impossible to change the GDS rates quickly enough to keep up with the changing conditions.  The results were guests booking lower rates, and customer service complaints when guests discovered the lower rates in GDS channels.  Previously, the property hurriedly, and sometimes inaccurately, closed many of the GDS channels to avoid overbooking; while they assessed their in house counts and passengers from partner airlines.  This practice cost the property in dollars and multiple night reservations during their high season, creating an uneven booking situation and making it impossible to forecast activities and staff accurately.

Today, Property A now relies on automated triggers, based on occupancy, to update the channels quickly and accurately to the dynamically changing market conditions.  The StayMgr wholesaler capabilities allow them to input reserved rooms quickly and accurately to service their airline partners. The property now has a higher monthly occupancy while achieving a considerable number of sold days and a 15% higher RevPAR.  By leveraging the multiple night capability of SoftHotel_PMX the property has a higher base business of multiple night stays; which has resulted in greater accuracy in forecasting hotel occupancy, and staffing.

Result: Property A saw a 15% increase in RevPAR.

Problem: Property B - Disparity between property and competing properties made it difficult to apply a rate strategy.

Solution: Rate Shopper, Market Inventory controls and ChannelMgr.

Property B is a limited service property surrounded by resort hotels.  Because it was a unique niche compared to the competition, offering a clean, friendly family environment with a complimentary hot breakfast; the rate point had to be adjusted based on a number of factors. The property was able to manually create a daily list of occupancy and rates from the surrounding hotels, but it wasn’t obvious to the property what to do with the information, especially on sold out days when the information the property gathered was obsolete almost as soon as it was collected.

Today, Property B has competitive information automatically collected dynamically several times a day, and has created a competitive matrix using Rate Shopper to assist them in managing that information effectively.  Using the Market Inventory controls the site has increased their GDS presence, especially for multiple night stays.  During the revenue workflow process the site discovered several property features that were not as conspicuously featured on the GDS channels and were delighted to make these changes quickly using SoftHotel_PMX Content Manager.

Result: Property B saw a 50% reduction in collection and analytics, an increase of 10% in multiple night stays, and a 10% increase in RevPAR.

Problem: Property C – Revenue Manager who is located off-site is responsible for revenue based activities for several properties.

Solution: Centralized StayMgr distribution with SoftHotel_PMX and InnSite.

The Revenue Manager was in a difficult position. The day to day activities around collecting, collating and driving revenue strategies for the sites she managed were keeping her from adding more sites effectively.  Some of the activities were delegated to on-site personnel; however the speed and accuracy of the updates were always difficult to manage.  In addition, activities at the local property level, such as a group cancellations, affected the revenue management strategies in place but were not always reported to the Revenue Manager in a timely manner...if at all.

Today, the sites all use StayMgr, which allows her to use the InnSite application to access all local information, with alerts delivered to her cell phone and remote office if conditions that she pre-configured occur.  SoftHotel_PMX automatically delivers changes in the strategy and the Revenue Manager is now able to effectively and accurately provide services for twice as many properties; all while remaining off-site. 

Result: Property C saw an increase in the efficiency of Revenue Management activities, with a reduction in staff necessary to facilitate those changes.

Problem: Property D - Calculation and distribution of rates was a problem for hub located property.

Solution: Relative Revenue Management (RRM) and Channel Management.

Property D is a limited service property located in a small town whose location to the interstate makes it a popular stop for highway travelers.  The occupancy and rate strategy of the hotel is a simple one, as rate parity is important to the property.  In order to distribute the same rate through all of the channels, however, the manager of the property had to calculate the base rate for each of the channels and apply the new rate into a different application for each channel.   In addition the property had to update discounts for negotiated rates and update those as well.

Today, Property D is using SoftHotel_PMX and is able to set up a template to calculate and administrate the rates based on a best available rate strategy.  Further, SoftHotel_PMX distributes the rates to all the channels identified by the property, a process that the manager estimates saves him and his staff up to 20 hours of input each week.

Result: Property D saves up to 20 hours per week not having to input rate changes to multiple channels.