Networked revenue-management systems: save time, money.(TECHNOLOGY)

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In today's fragmented distribution environment, effective revenue management is essential to maximizing profit while remaining competitive.

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"The natural development was to create tools to enable hoteliers to reduce the time they're dealing with [online travel agents]," said Ryan Haynes, global marketing manager for RateTiger. "Some hoteliers will manually update OTAs with rooms and rates. If you're managing more than five channels, it's going to be incredibly time-intensive. Should you make an error, you could miss out on rate parity."

RateTiger's suite of services allows hoteliers to access market data and analytics, as well as manage their hotel's distribution channels, online marketing and other services. The Washington Jefferson Hotel in New York saves over $20,000 a year since it switched from an on-staff revenue manager to RateTiger.

"RT strategy engine lets you alternate the way room rates distribute across the Internet," Haynes said. "This allows your hotel to set a series of different strategies so that as and when occupancy changes, and your competitors room rates change, your room rate will automatically change for you, sensitive to market conditions and forecasting much further ahead. So if you're looking at December 2012, you can automatically adjust rates across the Internet so you don't keep having to do price analysis."

Effective revenue management allows hoteliers to plan ahead for potential market changes.

"Toward the end of 2010, we noticed opportunities to shift focus in a moderate way from occupancy toward average rate," said Lesli Reynolds, VP of global distribution and revenue strategy for Omni Hotels. "At the end of the day we're focused on the [revenue per available room]; we started backing off some of the discounted offerings and added some value-added offerings."

Omni uses the Rainmaker Group's revolution system to crunch the numbers behind its rates. Reynolds said Omni has increased average length of stay from 1.4 nights to more than two nights across the brand since the system was introduced in late 2008.

"One of the challenges we've seen in 2011 is that there is an ever expanding number of online travel providers," Reynolds said. "One of the biggest challenges is that there are so many it becomes more important to have tech to integrate and have direct interfaces."

The same strategy is in play for smaller hotel owners and groups.

"Our focus is to push average daily rate so we increase our RevPAR even though we may give up a little bit of occupancy," said Fred Lopez, director of revenue for Park Place Hospitality Group. "The higher the rate, the more you bring to the bottom line."

Automation and analysis can help hoteliers improve revenue, save time

Advanced revenue-management systems allow hoteliers to save time each day by increasing rate parity and planning ahead for market contingencies.

"It is getting to the point where channel management is becoming more automated, so hoteliers are receiving the data and are able to assess the data instantly and get the best rate out there in order to get the bookings in," said Ryan Haynes, marketing manager for RateTiger.

More information means more control over your rates and booking policies.

"Because we are across all brand lines, we think we have a better competitive edge to really understand the rates in any given market," said Ron McCauley, president of Park Place Hospitality Group. "Effective revenue-management strategy is the way to increase your income by looking at all the opportunities to sell your room inventory that are available to you."

Omni Hotels has networked 15 of its 47 hotels, connecting a Micros property-management system with Rainmaker's revolution RM system.

"In 2010 we had some very large successes working with each property appropriately positioning our brand," said Brenda Gordon, corporate director of revenue management for Omni Hotels. "As a company last year we achieved our highest [revenue per available room] index percentage in the last 10 years. It really is working in every market, looking at how you rationally price rooms and get the most out of the highest-yielding distribution channels.'

asheivachman@questex.com

By Andrew Sheivachman

ASSOCIATE EDITOR