We have all heard the old cliche that “less is more”, and, while there is a grain of truth in the notion that simplicity and clarity are sometimes preferable to complexity, the reality is that, regardless of the circumstances, more information is almost always a better bet. Today we are seeing the tension between these two ideas play out in the hotel industry, where revenue management has exploded with new approaches in recent years-almost all of it facilitated by an avalanche of previously ignored or unavailable data. Consider just how sophisticated revenue management has become in the hotel industry. READ MORE

Revenue management continues to be one of the most important aspects of profitably operating a hotel, though it also remains one of the most difficult to grasp fully. Last year, I wrote an article on the Top 5 Questions Hotel Owners Should Be Asking About Revenue Management, which focused on conversations that owners should be having with their operators about setting goals, analyzing data and how best to measure results, all good primer leading up to budget season. To further the discussion, I will highlight some specific issues below that bear relevance in today's market READ MORE

Revenue Management, also known as yield management, may be defined as the process of analyzing, anticipating, and impacting consumer behavior to maximize the profits from a fixed perishable resource, primarily hotel guest rooms and airline passenger seats (Christodoulidou, Berezina, Cobanoglu, 2012). Revenue management, including overbooking and dynamic pricing, has been an enormously important innovation in the service industry (Netessine & Shumsky, 2002). For example, a number of airlines overbook their reservations for a particular flight by 14% since on average they expect a 10% to 20% no shows on flights. The Marriott hotel chain credits its revenue management system for generating additional revenue of about $100 million per fiscal year. READ MORE

Considering ancillary revenue streams can make up to 60% of hotel revenues of why would not any operator embark on the journey of total hotel revenue management? Apart from challenges related to the creation of a functioning revenue management culture the inclusion of F&B, spa and event revenue streams into that culture brings its own set of challenges. This article will explore these challenges and offer a guideline to successfully integrate additional revenue streams into a comprehensive revenue optimization strategy. Revenue per available room or RevPAR is a measurement of the success of a balanced occupancy versus average daily rate strategy. READ MORE

A consistent misconception among hoteliers is that pricing for profits means operating at the highest price level within your competitive set. This is as far from the truth as anything. Pricing for profits is an approach which takes into account how well your pricing strategy deals with one of the most common phenomenon in hotel or any form of business - price resistance. Price resistance is a price point where customers feel the need to look elsewhere. A superior indication of price leadership and pricing for profits is to see where you stand in terms of REVPAR against the Market Average. This is principally because if you are well above the market average REVPAR, you are exhibiting price leadership more than merely an average daily rate in the higher levels. READ MORE