“It is easy Jacob. I applied different strategies than I taught you”, explained an ever-smiling Patrick.

“So you are saying all strategies you taught me before are wrong?”, asked an exasperated Jacob.

“No my friend, those strategies were very much useful; but in the pre-COVID era. In this difficult time, you need to upgrade your strategies to be able to go beyond survival. Let me share the secrets to successful revenue generation with you.”

When Jacob left the bar that evening, he knew all the hotel revenue management do’s and don’ts he needed to consider to improve his sales.

“How to go beyond survival?”, is the biggest challenge hoteliers are facing in the post-COVID era. As the number of active cases is declining globally, the governments are easing the lockdown restrictions. 

People have started moving out of their homes with masks and sanitisers. While several countries are now welcoming international tourists, inbound tourism is going to be a major revenue booster for the year 2021.

Since the times have changed, you too need to go beyond the basics of hotel revenue management and adapt to new strategies to generate profits.

In this blog, I am going to discuss all the nitty-gritty strategies of revenue management to help you improve your hotel’s bottom line.

Revenue Management Strategies to Follow 

Ever since various nations have started easing the lockdown related restrictions, hoteliers have been offering rooms at dirt-cheap rates to keep sufficient guest influx and survive. So far, it has worked fine as the travellers were essentially moving with no intent of a vacation. Now that vacationers are back, you can apply these tips for successful hotel revenue and marketing management to stay ahead of your competitors.

Cleanliness is Godliness

In 2021, a clean and sanitised environment is a direct contributor to your property’s revenue generation. A lot of hoteliers consider installing sanitisation booths as non-profiting investments. I cannot begin to tell you how wrong they are. The first thing people are looking for in 2021 is a clean and sanitized accommodation that gives a sense of safety to the booker.

Critical dates

Travellers are now planning their vacations as there is always a risk of not getting rooms on long weekends. People are seizing the opportunity and travelling to their favourite and easily accessible locations on long weekends. 

Start planning. Keep the list of your long weekends handy all the time. Monitor the demands on those days and update the rates and restrictions accordingly. 

Data analysis

“Data is the new oil.”

Clive Humby

It is no secret that data analysis is the most important aspect of revenue management in hotel industry. It helps the revenue manager design strategies for the future by observing the booking patterns. In today’s date and time, one of the most important metrics to monitor is the future booking trends. People are planning their holidays to avoid any inconvenience in the COVID era.

Dynamic pricing

Keep applying different prices on different days as per your demand. Do not keep a flat price for all days that your property is available online. When you keep prices in line with demand, there is a win-win situation for both you and the guest. You can make a surplus revenue on the days when the demand is high by upselling the rooms. A guest can be benefitted from the low prices on the days when the prices are less due to low demand.

Compset analysis

Competition analysis is the evaluation of your competitor’s services and products to strategize your business growth. It is important to choose the right competition to analyse and benchmark against. An ideal hotel compset consists of a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 10 properties that you are going to monitor closely. 

It is important to define a compset as dynamic pricing depends highly on the competition. You can use THIS guide to choose your competitors and perform an analysis.

Wide distribution network

It is time to go all out. Reach out to all your existing OTA partners. Check the offers and promotional programs that can benefit you and enrol on them. Look for new OTAs that have joined the bandwagon recently and partner with them. Reach out to the corporates if you can cater to their banqueting requirements. Wedding season is coming back; make the most of it. 

Mistakes to Avoid in Revenue Management

While the above steps will help you improve. I have listed several mistakes in hotel revenue management which you should avoid at any cost if you do not want to lose on revenue opportunities.

Wrong matrices

The analysis is important to create and apply rate strategies. But, if you are analysing wrong/unimportant matrices you will not be able to get accurate results. Focus on key matrices like occupancy, booking pace, ADR, revenue generated, targets etc.

Suboptimal forecasting

This means not forecasting regularly; or forecasting with inaccurate or inadequate data. Forecasting helps you formulate pricing strategies and necessary actions to correct any pricing mistakes. In the absence of a forecast, you won’t be able to determine if the selling price is at par with the market. Similarly, an inaccurate forecast will lead you to sell your inventory at a suboptimal rate.

Yes, in 2021 it can be a challenging task. But there are experts available that can take care of these aspects for you.

Over-analysis

Certain revenue managers forget that generating revenue is their core job. They get busy analysing every possible number that is generated by the system. Also, they want to cover all grounds before setting the pricing rules. However, they forget the most important one; the implementation of tactics.

Paralysis by analysis causes prevention of business optimisation. The system produces 100s of reports. Learn to use reports that are useful and ignore garbage value reports.

Outdated technology

If you still use time-consuming technology with limited functionality in 2021, you need to immediately upgrade. Use a hotel PMS that provides time-saving features like contactless check-in. Check if your booking engine is in line with Google’s free hotel booking link program that helps you generate direct bookings and save on OTA commissions.

Frequently changing technology

Data from the past helps you to understand the patterns of guest bookings. It also goes a long way in maintaining the guest database and thus, your relationship with them. Changing your PMS every season just to get new software at a better cost is one of the serious hotel revenue management mistakes. While you may feel happy about saving some money, in reality, you are at a big loss.

Changing software comes with a cost of customer information which might not get migrated to the new system. This means that if your regular guest turns up at the property and new front office staff is welcoming them, they will not extend the agreed rate to the client making them unhappy. Stick to using a robust technology that keeps your data safe and does not cost a hefty fee.

Misleading content

“I was totally angry at the hotel for providing me with complete information at the time of booking. I could not even pick a fight to get a free upgrade”. 

said no guest ever

I have been an advocate of updating the right information across online platforms ever since the evolution of these platforms. When a person makes bookings via a website or an app, the human to human interaction is zero. It is therefore essential to review and update current and correct information about your property periodically.

In case you have restricted the use of certain facilities like the gym or the spa due to any reason, be sure to mention it on your online profile. That facility might be the sole reason for a guest to book your place.

Updating correct content also helps you showcase value for the guests in terms of the offerings as they would know what they are paying for before making the booking.

Ignoring guest feedback

At times I come across hoteliers who focus more on competitor’s pricing and less on guest feedback. Their focus is getting a better price than compset regardless of the guest review score of their property. My analysis says that just a 2% improvement in reputation contributes to a 14% rise in revenue.

Retaining an existing guest is as important as acquiring new business. Hence, once should never ignore any feedback from the guest. A happy and satisfied guest will not only return, but they will also recommend you to others, working as your brand ambassadors. 

This is without a doubt of the important aspects of effective hotel revenue management strategy. 

Being rigid about rates

“It is raining in December. It must be monsoon because my books said so.”

Customer retention is always more important than pricing rules. Many a time, hoteliers are hell-bent on things like weekday pricing or weekend pricing and won’t budge despite having empty rooms. This leads to an unhappy guest, a loss of opportunity and potential loss of future business.

But when you listen to your guests, things turn out to be better. Concentrate on their complaints and suggestions and make positive changes around them. 

Fearing OTAs

Over the years, there has been a perceived negative image of OTAs. Now, I am not saying, everything said about the OTAs is incorrect. I am saying that you can work with them instead of fighting or fearing them. 

Globally, 70% of bookings come from online sources today. OTAs give you a platform to be visible to a higher number of people for 15% to 18% commission. Instead of blocking inventory online on high peak dates, speak to them and try to work on an alternative commission module.

The post How to Do Hotel Revenue Management the Right Way? appeared first on eZee Absolute.

Later over drinks and dinner, they talked it out, and by the end of it; Jonathan had a consulting revenue manager taking care of Hotel Glasgow at 7th Ave in NYC. In a short period, Hotel Glasgow saw a 15% growth in revenue.

What did Patrick do differently than Jonathan? 

What more did he do than apply pricing strategy and compset analysis?

Through this blog, I will tell the course of actions, an ideal hotel revenue management service, (AKA RM service provider) undertakes for any property they work with.

What is Hotel Revenue Management?

The two most commonly accepted definitions of revenue management are as follows.  

“Selling the Right Room to the Right Client at the Right Moment at the Right Price on the Right Distribution Channel with the best commission efficiency.”

&

“Revenue management is the process of understanding, anticipating and influencing consumer behavior in order to maximize revenue or profits from a fixed, perishable resource”

For me, Hotel Revenue Management is 

Improving saleability of a hotel by making it visible and bookable on as many sales channels as possible, implementing efficient and affordable technology, exploring new business opportunities for the hotel and also being the first point of contact for OTAs and offline agents if any.

The History of Hotel Revenue Management

The concept of revenue management in hotels is a gift from the airlines. The airline industry conceptualized and introduced revenue management (yield management) in the form of dynamic pricing in the 1950s. The idea was to use the basic law of demand and supply for their benefit.

The hotel industry too was suffering from the problem of perishable inventory. There were other issues like an advance purchase at a lesser rate, and lower selling competition too. 

In the 90s, J.W. Marriott Jr. took the lead and invested in a system to provide a daily demand forecast for all properties. It has taken about three decades for the hotel industry to adopt the methods of modern-day revenue management.

A concept limited to airlines and five-star hotels has now reached the smallest accommodation providers across the globe.

Today, the revenue managers have taken the driving wheel of hotels’ growth.

They make pricing decisions for every sales channel based on detailed analysis. Their skills, however, are expensive.

Owing to the prices, the budget properties could not afford a full-time revenue manager. Until the rise of revenue management service provider companies and software, they heavily depended on their agents and OTA managers to guide them. While some of these agents helped the hotels, most of them only saw personal gains.

This malpractice slowed down after the entry of revenue management service providers into the market. They brought the expertise and experience to manage the revenue from online channels.

Let us understand how the revenue management service providers get you good visibility and better conversion.

The Hotel Revenue and Marketing Management Service Providers

Commonly known as revenue consultants or revenue management firms, modern-day revenue managers are growth hacking ninjas. Their primary goal is to ensure optimum revenue and room night generation for the accommodation.

The virtual revenue managers supervise your property remotely whilst having complete access to your hotel data. They are the primary point of contact for OTAs for any issues like price disparity, a new campaign an OTA is planning, uneven cancellation policies, etc.

Coming back to the most important question: What do hotel revenue management service providers do and how fast do they turn around the hotel sales?

Contrary to a popular myth, hotel revenue and marketing management is NOT a plug-and-play activity. It involves creating many reports, doing analysis, and strategizing before you see any improvement in your bookings.

I have been a hotel revenue manager for over half a decade. I initially started off in a chain of hotels. Afterward, I moved to a company that provides revenue management services. Subsequently, I started my own hotel revenue management service firm.

One thing I have followed religiously over all these years is the checklist of one-time and all-the-time to-do things.

Below is my holier-than-thou checklist for your benefit.

How do Hotel Revenue Managers Initiate the Turnaround Process?

Once the commercials are agreed upon and the contract is signed, the hotel revenue and marketing management service providers start with a sequential flow of tasks. These tasks lay the foundation for the regular exercise an RM service provider takes up.

1. Understanding the Property

The very first step of revenue management is to understand the property before one can improve the visibility and the bookings. The RM service provider looks into the hotel’s occupancy, ADR, Revenue, and RevPAR reports for the most and least productive quarters. This exercise helps the revenue manager to set goals and expectations for the property.

2. Performing an Online Hotel Audit

After getting a general idea of the hotel, the next step is to perform a complete audit on OTAs and metasearch engines to understand the gaps in pricing, content, availability, guest satisfaction, cancellation policies, discounts, etc.

The hotel revenue management service provider then creates a comprehensive report mentioning all these details and shares it with the hotel to establish a timeline for betterment. A typical hotel Audit took looks something like this.

3. Gathering Data with Global Hotel Sheet 

I call this my hotel encyclopedia. It is a comprehensive sheet that contains every detail about the hotel from its inception to the current date.

It includes the details about check-in check-out time, number of rooms, types of rooms and rate plans, amenities and facilities, point of contact, rack rate, broad cancellation policies, and more.

OTAs, offline agents, and even metasearch engines like Google, Trivago, and TripAdvisor; they all love current, complete, and useful data. In a nutshell, a good revenue manager does not proceed without this sheet.

4. Correcting the Content

Once the RM service provider has the global hotel sheet, they compare it with the audit report and add the missing details (if any) on OTAs and metasearch engines to create a sense of uniformity. This ensures trust from both the OTAs and prospective guests.

5. Identifying the Compset

While one person is busy correcting the content, the other member of the RM company already begins identifying the competition for analysis. It is important to know the key competitors, their strengths, and their weaknesses.

Compset analysis helps the RM service provider in pricing and helps the hotel improve its amenities, facilities, and guest services.

6. Setting the Rack Rate

The rack rate is the published rate before any discounts. After the competition analysis is complete, the RM goes back to the reports created during the first step. The RM service provider adds the hotel’s budget into the picture and sets the rack rate for the next 365 days. It helps the RM form the pricing strategy.

7. Technology Implementation

Quick and reliable channel manager and property management systems are crucial for changing rates and inventory in real-time on different OTAs. The RM service provider must identify the best suitable technology for the property and implement it.

It is the RM service provider’s duty to see that the transition is smooth and error-free. Not just that, the RM service provider also implements necessary rate shopper and revenue management tools.

As soon as they implement the fourth step, RMs begin with their routine exercises to boost hotel revenue. Because sometimes the hotel already has the technology in place but doesn’t know the techniques to implement it.

Routine tasks of revenue management service provider

The fun part or what they call the hustle begins when the property is given to a revenue manager to manage. From that point, he becomes the first point of contact for the hotel and the OTAs. The revenue manager performs certain exercises on a daily, or let us say, regular basis for the hotel.

Let us look at the tasks a revenue manager takes up on a daily or regular basis. 

1. Studying Reports

Reports to an RM service provider are what photosynthesis is to plants. It’s a morning ritual. Every revenue manager starts their day by looking at different reports like the previous night’s room nights and revenue, the present day’s occupancy and inventory availability, and Business on the books for the month, quarter, and year. Another report the RM looks at daily is the rate shopping report.

The RM also looks at the daily forecast report. These reports help the RM form a pricing strategy on a daily and long-term basis.

2. Sharing Reports

Without delay, the RM has to quickly share certain reports with the owners. This process can be automated with the help of the channel manager tool. It ensures that even if the RM is not at the desk or is taking care of some urgent business, the relevant people have reports in front of them for their purposes.

The pricing decisions made by a revenue manager have a direct impact on the hotel business. It is only fair that as a hotelier; you get a daily, monthly, and yearly revenue report, pace report, forecast report, budgeted vs actual revenue report, EBITDA report, ARR, and RevPAR report.

Revenue managers also share YoY and MoM reports so that one can understand the impact of their business decisions.

3. Creating Pricing Strategy

In an ideal scenario, the hotel gets optimum occupancy rates for 365 days a year. In a real scenario, unusual events happen every day. Certain days you see a sudden spike in the bookings, while other days see a low pick up.

In order to ensure that the hotel gets optimum occupancy at the best price, the revenue manager creates pricing strategies on the basis of the reports; to pick up business for the same day if there is availability and advance business for future dates.

Basically, the revenue manager even fine-tunes the revenue goals as per emerging situations. Here’s a detailed guide to pricing strategies that you might want to look at.

4. Offering Discounts and Commissions

Discounts and commissions are a part of the pricing strategy. Everyone likes discounts, even the algorithms of OTAs. A revenue manager floats timely discounts to meet the shortfall in revenue and boost the visibility of the hotel.

A revenue manager also negotiates TAC on your behalf with the OTA.

5. Maintaining Rate Parity

Along with creating a pricing strategy, the RM service provider has to ensure rate parity across all the OTAs. A major factor that determines your hotel’s visibility and position on an OTA is rate parity.

OTAs run a constant checker to see your selling price on their competitors’ websites. If a hotel is regularly flagged as an offender to the rate parity agreement, it loses visibility on the online portals.

A revenue manager ensures that your rates are in parity across all the OTAs. He ensures that your hotel is ranked high on different OTAs.

6. Curating and Updating New Content

Though you are selling your rooms online; it is a human buying it from a computer on the other side. It is therefore a revenue management service provider’s duty to ensure that new information is updated online regularly.

Simply put, the RM service provider has to update new amenities & facilities of the hotel online. If any services are under renovation or closed down, the RM has to take them down. If you decide to upgrade the rooms, the RM has to ensure that new images of the same are uploaded across all the OTAs.

7. Social Media Presence

An average person spends around 40 minutes daily scrolling through his social media accounts. It is therefore imperative for a revenue manager to ensure that the hotel is present on platforms like Facebook and Instagram so that users can tag the place in their posts. This helps the hotel reach more potential guests.

8. Initiating Website

A good revenue manager must also ensure that the hotel has an updated website with correct information, the newest images, and a booking engine from which the customers can make direct bookings.

If the hotel does not have a website, it is the revenue manager’s duty to initiate the process of getting a website created. There are many affordable website-building tools available in the market.

Furthermore, a revenue management service provider should try making a website more conversion-friendly by adding booking widgets and other tools.

9. New OTA and Metasearch Listing

It is a revenue manager’s purview to explore new business sources for the hotel regularly. If a new OTA comes into the market, it is the revenue manager who will reach out to them to initiate the contracting and negotiate the commissions on your behalf.

10. Guiding the Hotels with New Operating Procedures

The OTAs regularly update their extranet, booking policies, and payment policies for the betterment of the guests and hotels alike.

However, many times certain amendments are to be made as per new policies OTAs roll out.

For example: There has been a complete turnaround in the check-in, check-out and stay process post the Covid. Every state rolls new guidelines for the accommodation providers. The RM has to share the same with the accommodation providers to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Flagging Negative Reviews

Certain revenue managers also take up tasks like online review & reputation management as a part of their service package. Even if an RM service provider is not taking it up, it is the RM’s job to inform the owner about negative reviews that are published on any OTA.

It is critical for the RM service provider to do so, as all the pricing strategies or long-term goals created will fall flat if the hotel constantly gets customer service complaints. There are tools available in the market that RM should look to implement for managing hotel’s reputation online.

Representing the hotel

Though not on your payroll, the RM service provider represents you and is the first point of contact for the OTAs. They reach out to the OTAs regularly to get market insights, solve disparity, and learn OTAs’ strategies for certain high season dates.

When OTA needs to reach out to someone in the hotel for more reasons like new updates on the extranet, new policies for pricing, etc, they reach out to the RM service provider. Apart from that, the RM provider also attends OTA meets whenever possible to represent the hotels managed by them.

Though they cost you half of what a full-time revenue manager does, you should look for the above-mentioned checklist when you want to hire a hotel revenue management service provider.

If they follow all these processes, and more; Congratulations!!! You have found the right revenue management services provider for your hotel.

The post Guide to Hiring Revenue Management Service Provider appeared first on eZee Absolute.

 

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The hospitality industry keeps on changing its dynamic. And this is both a challenge and a blessing for hotels worldwide.

Now, just like every other aspect of the industry, the revenue management landscape has also gone through a transformation lately. Meaning? The revenue techniques of the past have just flown out of the window.

But has it become difficult to determine the right strategies? Not at all!

So lately, if you have been Googling “how to increase revenue in hotel business”, you’re at the right place.

In this blog, I will cover all the legit revenue management strategies in the hotel industry that you MUST implement in 2024 to succeed.

What is Revenue Management in the Hotel Industry?

Revenue management is at the core of a profitable hotel business. It is the process of analyzing customer demand and configuring the best rates to maximize hotel revenue.

Simply put, revenue management in the hospitality industry is all about selling,

• the right room;
• to the right guest;
• at the right moment;
• at the right price;
• and on the right platform.

Why is Revenue Management Important for Hotels? 

In our blog section, there are various revenue management articles. However, many still have this question – “what is the purpose of revenue optimization in the hotel business?”

The answer is actually quite simple. Revenue management helps hotels to drive more revenue from their stagnant source of income (i.e. their rooms). By applying the revenue and marketing management strategies, hotels can:

1. Understand the guest’s demands (and booking pattern)
2. Apply the right room rates
3. Expand the hotel business
4. Win against competition

Despite such benefits, most of the hotels ignore managing their revenue. It’s high time that you all should realize that —

A profitable hotel business is not high occupancy, rather it is more REVENUE. 

Now that you know what revenue management is and its importance, you might be worried about how to increase hotel revenue.

So, let’s dig in with a GOOD answer.

Best Hotel Revenue Management Strategies to Apply

Now, let’s address the burning question – how to maximize hotel revenue? 

If you search online, you’ll find a gazillion hotel revenue management tips. However, most of them are superficial and don’t cover the nitty-gritty.

Which is why I am presenting you with the 17 solid hotel revenue management strategies that you can apply right away and milk benefits.

1. Budget and forecast

Budget planning is a critical part of a hotel’s success, any day. Doesn’t matter what’s the size of your hotel, a robust and mindfully created budget can keep your property profitable, attractive, and functioning properly.

Further, you need to top up hotel budgeting with forecasting. If you aren’t forecasting it is a systematic estimation of guests’ demand and future preferences.

Not to mention, budgeting and forecasting are a brilliant combination that will always help you refrain from exhausting your financial reserves.

Also, do read out hotel budgeting article to learn more about it.

2. Do competition analysis 

The concept of revenue management for the hospitality industry cannot be covered without touching base with competitor analysis. After all, competition analysis is one of the fundamentals of creating robust hotel revenue management strategies.

Basically, with competition analysis, you can understand your and your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. You can know your position in the market and eventually work to stand out. 

But first things first, not every hotel next door is your competitor. You have to define your competition set (AKA compset). There are certain parameters that you should consider before considering any property as your competitor. Some of them are:

1. No.of rooms
2. Room types
3. Accommodation type
4. Size of property
5. No. of OTA connections
6. Number of services
7. Average ratings and  reviews

Once the RIGHT compset is defined, you can analyze their rates via tools like Rate Shopper. You can check and compare their current pricing strategy and update your rates accordingly.

This will not only help you strategize and manage revenue, but it will also provide you with proper forecasting. As a result, you can attract the right kind of guests at the right time and maintain the revenue you earn.

3. Load rates and inventory

Travelling is spiking, and you, as a hotelier, should definitely not miss out on the bookings.

Further, looking at the current scenario, the travel numbers in 2024 are likely to surpass the numbers in 2023. The industry is going to witness a good amount of people travelling to various places.

When we talk about hotel revenue management best practices, loading your room rates and inventory on all the channels is certainly the first and foremost thing to do.

If you haven’t done so yet, this is certainly the right time.

4. Check the calendar

Now, this point is one of the prominent revenue management strategies. Talking about checking the calendar, it is about listing down all the events when people are likely to travel and stay.

What could be those events? Weekends, holidays, concerts, festivals etc.

When you’re done listing, try to come up with strategies to attract your guests to your hotel. Maybe you could try offering a discount.

So, if you’re a pro hotelier, you will never even think of skipping this part.

Pro Tip: When you’re listing holidays and festivals, do include holidays from neighbouring states and provinces. Because it might be a working Tuesday in your town, but a holiday in some other place. So, make the most out of it.

Also, many people are now not travelling faraway distances, rather exploring nearby places. So, catering to your neighbouring guests is certainly a great idea.

5. Perform demand forecasting

Analyzing your past and present data is important to channelize your marketing efforts and is one of the top strategies to increase hotel revenue. 

But extracting the right data and actually going through them in detail is quite hectic. Then how to figure out which strategy is working for you? 

This is where demand forecasting comes into the picture. It is the prediction of future business performance. In which, data is of utmost importance.

This is how you can perform demand forecasting:

1. Data Collection: Gather data such as peak and weak seasons, long weekends, festivals and so on.
2. Analysis: Find out how you’ve performed on these occasions. Then predict how you’ll be able to perform in the coming year.

In that case, a comprehensive hotel management system helps you get detailed reports and business insights that include the revenue you earned, your best-selling factors, your ADR, and more. These reports will help you make precise decisions in your hotel revenue strategy.

In the end, data analysis will help you come up with better revenue management techniques to implement.

6. Think again about OTA connections

When it comes to hotel revenue optimization, you need to have the right DISTRIBUTION of the rooms to sell the right room at the right prices. For that reason, you have to give fresh thought to your OTA connections: 

1. Select the regional as well as international OTAs
2. Consider your property type and your target audience
3. Last but not least, OTAs that fall into your budget. 

Let me give you an example to have a better idea:

If you’re a B&B in Europe, then you should connect to regional OTAs like eDreams Odigeo and global OTAs like Expedia, and Booking.com. Since you are a B&B, you also need to consider OTAs such as Airbnb and bedandbreakfast.com that help you target your potential guests.

However, when you zero in your distribution method, keep in mind that they should be light on your pocket.

Moreover, you should not limit yourself to 2-3 OTAs. The more the OTA connections, the wider the exposure is. In turn, more bookings and revenue.

7. Adopt a uniform distribution method 

Besides selecting the right OTAs, it is equally important to select the right distribution method as well.

Now, many of you still prefer the allocated inventory distribution method in which you allocate a fixed inventory to a particular channel. However, you may lose potential booking opportunities in this scenario. 

Instead, you should apply a uniform inventory distribution method and list all your inventories on all channels. As a result, you get bookings from all the possible channels and your inventory is utilized to the fullest. 

#ProTip: Use technology like channel manager to practice this method effectively.

8. Perform guest segmentation 

Segmentation is a key element of hotel revenue management. Targeting all types of customers for your hotel is a waste of time and money. Therefore, segmenting and pitching the right set of guests is important.

One of the best ways to segment your audience is by their reason for travel. It could be a family holiday, wedding, tourist event, adventure, relaxation, business, etc. 

Not only that, identifying your guests and evaluating their habits; for example, the kind of rooms, hotel facilities and location they’re looking for. Of course, several other factors will help you optimize your room rates and showcase your services accordingly.

Besides, you can analyze and drill down the segment that is giving you more business. In this way, you can strategize to make more revenue from them. 

Hence, knowing your target audience is important to plan and execute your hotel’s revenue management strategies.

Furthermore, you can also tap into guest personas. If you aren’t aware of it, a guest persona is a fictional character that a hotel creates to describe its ideal guests. Meaning, it is the representation of a guest demographic that is likely to stay at the property.
Talking about its prominence, guest personas help hotels in delivering personalised experiences to their guests and gain their trust, loyalty and increase repeat bookings.

9. Make a responsive hotel website

As the facts stand in 2019,

1/3rd of the total bookings are made through mobile. And this percentage is going to increase in the upcoming years. 

Pegasus

Having said that, you have to focus on your hotel’s website. And get one made if you do not own a brand website.

Ensure the following characteristics of your website:

1. Is responsive and easily navigable
2. Has attractive photos and videos
3. Is optimized using different SEO strategies
   (If you’re clueless about hotel SEO, here’s our step-by-step guide to hotel SEO. Optimize your hotel website, rank higher, and get more bookings.)
4. Has an integrated booking engine to gain direct bookings 
5. Provides all the required information about your hotel and your offerings

If your website doesn’t have these parameters, there are chances of losing significant bookings and revenue. So having a full-fledged hotel website will pose as an assured revenue management strategy for hotels every year.

We have a blog where we have mentioned some of the top elements you need to have on your hotel website. Do give it a read to learn more about it.

The Must-Have Hotel Website Features

Also, we hope you don’t have these myths about owning a hotel website in your mind.

10. Emphasize getting more direct bookings

Needless to say, OTAs are a great platform to advertise your hotel and services. However, a significant chunk of your revenue is deducted as a part of their commissions. 

That is why you should get a booking engine that allows your guests to book with you directly from your website. Certainly, that means you get commission-free bookings. 

Here are some of the  actions you can take to increase direct bookings:

1. Get listed on metasearch engines like TripAdvisor and Trivago
2. Give discounts on direct booking
3. Showcase your online reviews
4. Have a chatbot to attend to all your guests’ inquiries
5. Highlight your amenities

…and there are many other ways to increase your direct bookings. You can find out more from here. 

11. Use metasearch to your advantage

When people like a property, they look it up on Google, TripAdvisor, Trivago, etc. to get more information about it. 

This can be an excellent opportunity for you. Therefore, you should add your hotel website to the Google My Business listing so that a customer can go to your website and explore the options of booking directly with you.

Furthermore, Google has also a program called Free Hotel Booking Links that allows you to display your real-time rates for free. Meaning, you can drive more direct bookings without any hassles. You can enrol on this program through an authorised partner. 

TripAdvisor, on the other hand, allows hoteliers to connect the hotel booking engine with their search engines so that a guest can book directly from the hotel website.

You can take advantage of this and provide add-ons, which you generally do not offer via OTAs because of hefty commissions. This way you can save on some commission and guests would get more value for money.

12. Practice yield management

Yield management is an inseparable part of revenue management for hotels.

However, there is a common misconception that revenue management is the same as yield management. 

But, that’s not the case. Yield management for hotels encompasses the revenue generated through room charges or occupancy. Whereas revenue management in the hospitality industry involves a whole lot more than just occupancy.

Basically, it is all about demand and supply.

You have to set different rates for different occupancy levels. 

You can define different occupancy slabs and set different rates for each slab. And as the occupancy increases, there is a percentage or amount increase in the basic room rates. 

On top of this, it is considered the most important tool to balance the revenue that you earn, especially when the demand is less. Hence, yield management proves to be the most practical way to increase your revenue.

Here’s how you can practice yield management strategies to get more revenue. 

13. Try multiple pricing strategies

Pricing strategies play an important role in hotel revenue management. There are different pricing strategies, some of them are as mentioned:

Segmented rates

In this strategy, segment your customers and offer different rates to each customer segment.

For example:

• Following the rate parity strategy, the rates for the open market should be the same.
• On the other hand, offer negotiated rates to the corporate segment and in return ask them to commit a certain number of rooms for the negotiated rates.
• Connect with a tour operator and sell them some rooms at special rates.

Rates as per the length of stay (LOS)

Adjust your prices based on your guests’ length of stay.

For example

Mandate the length of your guest’s stay by offering them good prices. Get a 3N/2D stay at Avalanche Resort and at 200 USD only.

Offer packages

A package is a room rate clustered together with other products and services.

For example

Offer a free meal package. If your guests have selected a European plan, then offer a free meal for the first day as a package.

Here are top-performing pricing strategies for hotels explained in detail.

14. Partner with local businesses

You may have not considered it important enough, but partnering with local businesses can actually be a great catalyst for your revenue management strategy for hotels.

Following rooms and amenities, activities make up the next largest revenue source for hotels.

Local partnerships can expand your revenue streams and provide authentic experiences to your guests.

If you are located in a place with scenic destinations, offer your guests a city tour. If you are nearby an amusement park then you can tie up with them, and offer tickets at some discounted rates to your guests.  

Likewise, you can explore many such additional avenues of extra revenue.

Further, not to forget, chances are that those businesses around your property are also open for such partnerships. So, ensure that you do reach out to them.

15. Adopt the latest technology solutions 

Now if you look around, technology is everywhere. It’s in the payments you make (digital you know), the shopping you do, the services you consume, etc. 

Further, the current and future generations are tilting toward innovative technology.

Do you know why? Simple – the ease of use.

Hence, providing quick service through the latest technology is key to increasing bookings and hotel revenue. However, the question is: which technology solution you will use to streamline your operations and increase productivity?

I’d say a complete suite of seamlessly integrated solutions can be a shot to your arm. With automated solutions, you can provide quick and better services.

Besides, these days technology such as a hotel chatbot is being used to assist with basic operations and information and improve guests’ experience. 

Hotels can also perform the quick operation at their voice command with a digital assistant, thus reducing their time and effort in getting a task done. 

Moreover, these days, a few hotels have started practising the Internet of Things (IoT). For example, there are IoT solutions that adjust room temperature depending on room occupancy, energy management systems, in-room concierge and whatnot. 

Here’s how the next-gen technology like IoT can increase your hotel revenue and expand your business.

16. Manage your reviews

The first thing guests check before visiting a hotel is its reviews. With the increasing number of online platforms, guests often communicate and interact online to share the experiences they had.

That’s why hotels these days need to focus on their hotel reviews and reputation. This also forms an essential part of your hotel revenue management strategies.

You see,

Customer ratings affect hotel revenue.

How? Well, today people can search and find all the travel and hotel information provided by different sites. Let’s take TripAdvisor for example. TripAdvisor provides information and reviews written by the guests about the particular hotel and its services.

And this ultimately influences the guest’s final decision to book a hotel. This way, hotel reviews have a greater impact on the current and future guests that you may welcome at your hotel.

Therefore, to ensure that none of the reviews are left unresponded, hotels use review management software like Critique. Here’s how it works:

Thus, you must respond to all the reviews (especially, the negative ones). You can utilize our free and ready-to-use review response templates to regulate your review management. 

17. Redesign your loyalty programs 

Guests often need to travel to the same location again. Mostly these kinds of guests are business travellers who prefer to utilize services from trusted hotel brands. Hotels need to face this fact as soon as possible and make good use of it by running some good loyalty programs.

Now, don’t you think guests will prefer hotels that offer discounts or rewards to value their frequent guests? Well, hotel loyalty programs are the best way to do that and increase repeat guests as well as direct guests. This makes them an undeniable aspect of your hotel revenue management strategies.

The sad thing is – only a few hotels consider loyalty programs as an important part of their marketing strategy. But the truth is loyalty programs can be a key factor in the guests’ decision-making process. Especially, those who frequently visit your hotel. Employing a stable hotel loyalty program software can strengthen a hotel’s reward programs.

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Bonus: Expense management

We’ve discussed several strategies to drive more revenue. But if you look carefully, one important aspect of effective revenue management is EXPENSE CONTROL.

Because, if you don’t control your expenses, you’ll be stuck with the same or limited profit margin. 

While you are handling numerous activities, you may not realize when the routine expenses become UNCONTROLLABLE.

For that reason, you have to scrutinize your expenses and try to optimize them. Here are the 9 best cost-saving ideas for hotels. Explore them, reduce your expenses and consequently increase your profit margin.

FAQs

The post 17 Top Hotel Revenue Management Strategies to Adopt in 2024 [Bonus Inside] appeared first on eZee Absolute.

Well, all the answers lead to one and only one factor and that is – maximized revenue.

And to maximize your revenue, you must be applying 100s of strategies. Out of them, yield management is one of the key pricing strategies for hotels.

Now, let’s understand,

What is yield management in hotels?

Yield Management – you must be familiar with this term. If you’re not let me tell you, yield management can be defined as, selling a product or service at the:

• Right rate to 
• The right customer at the 
• The right time.

In simple words, ‘the process of determining right hotel room pricing is called yield management strategy.’ 

Now you may think that yield management looks the same as revenue management. (It’s quite natural to get confused between the two). Although, there’s a thin line of difference between both.

What is the difference between yield management and revenue management?

There’s a very thin line of difference between yield management and revenue management. While talking about yield management for hotels, it encompasses the revenue generated through the room charges or occupancy, whereas revenue management involves a whole lot more than just occupancy.

We have a FREE step-by-step guide for hotel revenue management. You can download it from here and get a clear idea.

Hence, yield management is not the same as revenue management, but it’s a subset.

You may think, what happens if you don’t adopt yield management? And what if you do? 

To answer that, I would like to explain to you,

What are the benefits of yield management in hotel industry?

There are several benefits of yield management. I’ve listed the three main benefits: 

1. Increased revenue:

Yield management in the hospitality industry helps you to make the most of your occupancy. It ensures a higher revenue, even if your occupancy is not 100%. (Regardless of the peak or weak season.) A solid yield management strategy can increase your revenue significantly.

Let’s look at this example: 

Suppose your property has 10 rooms, and revenue per available room is 50$. Now, consider these two cases:

Case 1: When all your rooms are occupied. Then your earned revenue is 500$ (Achieved revenue).

Case 2: Now, say you increase your room rate (using yield management technique) from 50$ to 100$ during peak season and sell all the 10 rooms, then your total earned revenue is 1000$. (This is also known as potential revenue)

Now, 

In this case, you earned 50% more revenue. This is how you can calculate the potential revenue using yield management.

It is as simple as,

Higher demand = Higher room rates.

2. Decreased errors

With hotel yield management strategies, there’s no chance of making mistakes while setting the price of the rooms. The accurate demand forecasting eliminates any miscalculated risks.

Example:

Initially, you must be randomly changing the prices as and when the high season approaches, but when you practice yield management, you have to perform demand forecasting.

When you perform the data forecasting, you get accurate data with exact details, which helps you to set the best room rates.

Thus, with the precise details, your chances of getting errors.

Now that you know the what and why of yield management, let’s us understand, 

How to implement hotel yield management strategy?

For any hotel, it becomes very important to set the RIGHT room rates. Unlike other industries, hospitality industry possesses fixed resources to earn revenue from i.e the number of rooms (Here I’ve excluded the other services that hotels offer). 

For that reason, hotels have to stick to the solid pricing strategy for rooms.

In this case, yield management is the best practice for the hotels to strategically sell their rooms at optimized rates.

As I said previously, hotel yield management is all about demand and supply. So, to apply the result-driven yield management strategy you have to perform the following steps:

• Decide the occupancy slabs
• Decide the room rates as per the occupancy slabs
• Apply yield management strategies
• Constant monitoring 

Let’s dig deeper into each step one by one: 

Decide the occupancy slabs

Out of several factors, here are a few important ones which affect your occupancy slabs:

•  Based on seasons

Generally, a hotel’s year is classified in two seasons: 1. High season and 2. Low season.

Festivals are considered the peak seasons for hotels. During festivals, hotels witness a hike in their bookings. 

Let me tell what you have to do:

Simply find out the maximum occupancy during the high and low season. Compare it with your year-round average occupancy. You can even analyze the upcoming year’s calendar and find out the following holidays. 

• Major festivals of your region
• Long weekends
• Annual holiday periods (Christmas, New Year, etc.)
• Public holidays
• School holidays
• Local events (annual festivals, sporting events, concerts, etc.)

Once you have analysed occupancy, you can create the occupancy slabs smartly to drive more revenue.  

•  Based on location

Your property’s location poses as an important factor as well. You may ask, ‘how Mehul?’

Well, let’s say your hotel is located near a stadium or a central convention center, where some recurring events like- Sunburn, cricket tournaments, events, and expos are being hosted. 

Needless to say, there are high chances of receiving more bookings during such events. 

So what you can do is list down such annual events in advance. Then when the event is approaching, apply the yield management strategy as discussed in the above points. 

Here you can vary the occupancy slabs as well as the room rates. 

•  Based on past occupancy

Along with the occupancy, you can also drill down your hotel’s past occupancy levels/percentage. 

Let’s say, during last year’s high season, your average occupancy was 80% whereas, during the low season, your average occupancy was 40%.

#Protip: You can make your low season a profitable one by applying effective hotel promotion ideas, instead of keeping your rooms vacant. 

From these data, you’ll definitely get a rough idea on your last year’s minimum and maximum of occupancy percentage. So, you can create the slabs wisely. 

Decide the room rates as per the occupancy slabs. 

Once you have created the slabs the next important step is to decide the room rates for each slab. For that, you have to consider the following factors.

• Guest types:

Your hotel must be welcoming a variety of guests viz. corporate guests, backpackers, solo-travellers, family groups, and likewise. 

Now you see, all these different types of guests have their different requirements. For example, corporate guests mostly stay for a longer period of time. And they generally look for a budget yet comfortable stay.

Moreover, business travelers tend to book at the last minute. (Consider this factor as well.)

Howbeit, the family or groups are leisure travelers, who are more likely to spend more and might look for better amenities.

Set the room rates for different occupancy slabs based on various factors.  

• Based on past ADR, RevPar

Average Daily Rate (Read: ADR) and Revenue per available room (Read: RevPAR) are the two key parameters that affect your hotel’s revenue to a great extent. 

Basically, when you drill down your hotel’s past data, also find out which different room rates (ADRs) gave you maximum RevPAR. 

By studying this data, you’ll be able to determine the room rates which drive maximum revenue (as well as bookings) for your hotel. . 

Applying Yield Management 

Now, you know different aspects to consider while forming the yield management strategy for your hotel. But, you may still wonder about the IMPLEMENTATION of these strategies! Don’t worry! You can automate this pricing with yield management systems effortlessly. 

You can configure slabs in a channel manager and booking engine. As and when you receive bookings (occupancy increases), your rates change according to the configured occupancy slabs. 

Let me show you how it happens with one of the real-time yield management examples:

Firstly, we’ll see how to create occupancy slabs. 

Let’s say, during the first 3 months of 2019, your average occupancy was 80% and the highest occupancy was 95%.

Now you can easily predict that you’ll receive a similar occupancy this year as well. 

So, you can make the following slabs:

• 0-25%
• 25-50%
• 50-80%
• 80-95%
• 95-100%

Then you can to define the number of slabs as shown in the below screenshot:

Now let’s move on to the next step – to decide the rates of slab-wise pricing. 

Firstly, I’d like to tell you that you can increase the room rates in two ways, either percentage-wise or amount wise.

Then, select the following things and complete your slab:

1. Source (it can be your booking engine or any pother OTAs)
2. Rate plan
3. Configure the rates as per different slabs
4. Select the date range. (The duration in which you want to apply this pricing)

And you are all set! Refer to the following screenshot:

IMPORTANT NOTE: The example of slab wise pricing mentioned above is not a standard one. It is for illustration purposes only. Depending on the trends and your hotel’s data, you can change your slabs.

Basically, with the booking engine and channel manager that support the yield management pricing, you can update your pricing on all platforms. (website, OTAs, and on every platform to which your hotel is connected with.)

Thus, all you have to do is configure the slabs, sit back and relax. Rest of the things are taken care of by the yield management system. 

See, how to configure yield management in eZee Centrix.

Constant Monitoring and updating yield

Well, this is a key thing to consider while you practice yield management strategies for your hotel. It is the monitoring of market trends. So I would recommend that once you have configured the slabs in the system, DO NOT stick to these slabs adamantly. You can monitor your competitor’s rates, the latest trends of the industry, or many other things and be dynamic about your changes.

When you apply a variable pricing strategy, you always want to keep a check on your competitors’ rates and analyze them to make sure you have a prototype ready for your rate prediction. 

While you are increasing or decreasing your room rates, you should know what your competitors are doing. It may happen that during high season you are increasing your rates, while your competitors are not. And they grab all the bookings.

So, I would recommend, always keep an eye on your competitors, before making any changes on your pricing.

#Protip: Nowadays, there are tools like rate shopper, that gives your competitor's rates right in your system.

In a nutshell, through yield management, you can get more revenue by focusing on profitable bookings. Unlike those hotels who may make the mistake of emphasizing booking volume and losing potential revenue.

Conclusion

In this blog, I have tried to cover every nook and corner of the yield management for hotels. 

Apart from this, you don’t have to outsource it from third-party revenue management agencies or hire a revenue manager. You can do it on your own with the advanced technology solutions that support yield management. 

While selecting the booking engine and channel manager, you should definitely see this feature as the key parameter. If your current solutions don’t support this slab wise pricing, I would recommend changing your system right away!

In case you have any doubts or concerns, tell in comments. I’d love to help you!

The post Yield Management in Hotel Industry: Key Factor of Revenue Generation appeared first on eZee Absolute.

“Bringing technology to mobile was the game changer. It is not just about the hoteliers’ ease but also about providing an end to end experience to the guest”, said Patrick the great.

As the crowd started to gather around the table, the showman narrated the tale of hotels and how technology transformed the way people travel today.

Hello, in this blog I have tried to cover how technology is changing the face of the hospitality industry.  

Technology in Hospitality Industry: How Did it Evolve?

Hospitality has existed globally since the time of cavemen. However, commercialisation only came into the picture in the 700s. It was not until the 1800s that the world saw the first modern hotel in England. Colonisation and increased global trade facilitated traders travelling distances. Nonetheless, the only technology available in the most upscale hotels until 1894 was a telephone at the front office which required an operator. Around 1927, radios made their way to the hotel rooms.

Leisure travel was a luxury the rich could afford in the 1900s. Technology was slowly making its way to hotels.

Teledex made the first ever telephones specifically for the hotel industry in 1984; which to date remains one of the most used technologies in hotel rooms.

The personal computer in 1981, followed by the worldwide web in the 1990s was an actual technology revolution that hotels witnessed with people using alternative channels to book their stay. 

The front office has always been the first department to embrace any tech related changes in a hotel.

Technology at the Hotel Front Desk

I have maintained for years that the front office is the backbone of any hotel. Essentially so, because guest reservations come under the purview of the front office team. 

One may argue that room sales generate revenue and hence it comes under the sales and revenue department. 

I would like to clarify to all readers that sales executives make outbound calls, while the reservation team caters to inbound queries.

The Hotel PMS

When technology use in the hospitality industry was still in its infantry stage, people would walk into an accommodation, check availability and book the rooms. Then came the telephonic revolution. The guests and the travel agents would call a hotel and book the room whenever they pleased. Some hoteliers used the rudimentary methods of record keeping with manual data entry on books. Some still continue to do so in the smartphone era. 

The smart hotels adapted to technology when dot com was still not heard of. In the 70s, the legacy PMS appeared in the market, which helped the hoteliers keep a track of reservations and inventory; a module based on the airline’s model.

With the front office’s role increasing in the hotel operations, these systems kept on upgrading themselves with modules like guest profiling, housekeeping, GDS connectivity, sales and profits, revenue management; one at a time. This was indeed a costly affair. Hoteliers were required to purchase a new system to match the software, and needed technicians to upgrade the software. Until 2010, the PMS systems were offline and off the cloud. 

The year 2010 has been another celebration worthy milestone for the hoteliers. SaaS companies took the legacy software to the cloud. This has since eliminated the need for on-premise installations and configurations; apart from tangible benefits like the ability to operate the software from any device, data security and freedom from the bandwidth issue. The potential of the cloud PMS systems to integrate with third party software has streamlined operations like accounting, concierge, housekeeping, payment management, etc.

After 2017, the trend for API first has been established in PMSes, enabling third party integrations without having to redesign the entire software.

OTAs and the Channel Managers

If you belong to the Boomer, Gen X or Millennial era and were lucky enough to have dial-up, you’d know what and how websites looked back in the 90s. 

In the year 1995, chain hotels realised the power of data centralisation and online bookings. This idea paved the way for companies like Booking.com, Travelocity, and Expedia in 1996. 

Until then, GDS systems were the only form of online bookings where agents would log in to the system via intranet on guests’ behalf to book hotels, airline tickets etc. 

Indian entrepreneurs too ventured into the travel dot com business in the 2000s giving birth to MakeMyTrip, TravelGuru, Cleartrip, Goibibo and so on. 

People started exploring these websites for flight and hotel bookings. They were fixated to travel guides and looked up hotels on the internet when there was no direct contact number. Travellers diverted from traditional agents to online travel aggregators which offered a variety of hotels, funnels, centralised information and attractive prices. It was a win-win for both the hotel and OTAs as the hotels were able to reach out to more guests and the OTAs were earning commissions in return. 

Necessity is the mother of invention.

With a rise in the number of online channels, a need for middleware was felt which could send rate and inventory to all the OTAs simultaneously and report the bookings to PMS. Thus the channel manager was born. 

Hoteliers embraced the new tech dearly as it reduced the manual efforts of pushing rates and inventory separately on every OTA. The overbookings substantially decreased as the channel manager updated the data across all the OTAs in real time. Eventually, channel manager has become a full-fledged software that works independently of a PMS system. Modern day channel managers control aspects like analytics, discounts, review management from within the wireframe.

The Revolution of Mobile Technology in Hospitality Industry

Another technology that was making its way to users at the beginning of the 21st century was mobile phones. In the year 2007, late Steve Job’s Apple Inc. launched the first iPhone; and the world has never been the same ever since. Other hardware makers followed the suit. Google quickly launched its Android OS for mobile phones. 

Between 2010 and 2015, the number of mobile users and mobile usage increased multifold globally. OTAs too seized the opportunity and started rolling out their websites in the form of mobile apps. Avid travellers moved to mobile apps while the traditional ones needed the motivation to move.

Mobile discounts started making their way.

Hoteliers were now able to get better visibility for a nominal extra price.

As of today, 70% of the total hotel research and bookings happen through mobile where Gen Z is leading the march. 

Mobile has also enabled travellers to make a last-minute plan. Gone are those days where the local travel bookings also happened 15-20 days in advance. Google data shows that travel related searches including ‘tonight’ and ‘today’ have increased by 519% over the last five years. 

However, that being said, the conversion ratio of people checking a property on mobile v/s people booking that property is merely 21%. 

This means the hoteliers have to be on the top of their game in terms of the content, offerings, and services to be bookable.

The technology used in the hotel industry has reached beyond hotel bookings now. Companies are investing to invent and offer an end to end tech experience to travellers. The post COVID era has seen a rise of solutions like contactless check-ins, mobile app-based room service, face recognition based room door unlocking and much more. 

Hilton went a step ahead and developed Connie, the world’s first concierge robot in 2016 based on AI and ML in collaboration with IBM.

Technology in hospitality industry has restructured the guest reservations completely. Automated payment reminders, important details to know before arrival are now pre-configured in the PMS, saving time and efforts to pass on the same details. The chatbots answer many guest queries after office hours, increasing guest satisfaction. 

Revenue and sales departments have immensely benefitted from technology used in hotels. It empowers them to perform a multi-dimensional data analysis in order to set up the rates for future dates. The rise of dynamic pricing tools has reduced the work of revenue managers by 80%. 

Data analysts are now entering the hotel industry to change the way hotels set their tariffs. 

Tech has penetrated deeply into the other aspects of hospitality as well.

Technology in Hospitality Industry Beyond the Front Office

While the front office has aced the technology game, other departments are not left far behind. The restaurants use POS systems to record orders, generate KOTs and invoices, collect payments and even do stock management. The tablets in the hands of the servers have replaced traditional KOT books, which resulted in missing out on an order or preparing the wrong dish. These days orders are displayed widely on the kitchen TV screens (KDS) for the chefs to act upon. 

That is not all; robot servers, drone food delivery, driverless car delivering food are also outstanding examples of technology changing the face of hospitality. 

Though housekeeping is a manual job, modern day housekeepers have made their own cool devices to improve their efficiency. One such device is a housekeeping robot that cleans the floor efficiently while the housekeeping staff takes care of other chores.

Even the ever centurion looking accounts department has moved to use internet based solutions to be able to work from anywhere and have all reports at the fingertips.

Every hotelier is now giving utmost importance to the safety and security of their guests and staff. The hotels these days are powered with night vision cameras, remote visual IP based cameras, unbreakable safety lockers and sensor based alarms among other things to provide their guests with a sense of security.

Takeaways

• Technology has changed the way hoteliers provide and end-users receive the experience.
• With time, technology has become as important as data.
• Mobile apps for the hotel industry are the next big thing, and they are going to stay.
• Hotels that do not adapt to technology will peril.

What’s Next for Technology in the Hospitality Industry?

So far, we explored and understood how technology in the hospitality industry evolved. However, it is equally important to be aware of what’s in store in the upcoming years. 

IoT in Hospitality Industry

IoT or the Internet of Things is going to be the next big change in hotel tech. It is already revolutionising the US and UK markets with devices like self-serving kiosks, smart lighting, temperature control on pre-defined instructions.

Well, that is just the tip of the iceberg. IoT can do many more amazing things. We have a dedicated article on IoT for hotels which you can read here. 

Besides IoT, the new technology used in the hospitality industry would be blockchain, artificial intelligence and OCR. 

In Conclusion

With each passing day, the technology reinvents to improve our efficiency and save time to get some more work done. 

From video CDs of the hotels to 360 degree photography, soon, we will get the 3D look and feel of the property through AR. Some hotels have already pioneered VR based hotel tours. 

The important thing to remember is to be humane and consume the technology instead of being consumed by it. 

The post Technology in Hospitality Industry: The Past, The Present & The Future appeared first on eZee Absolute.