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OnLiners@ibiza

I was invited to Ibiza last month for the OnLiners event where online marketing and distribution companies got to meet and interact with local hoteliers. The idea was to introduce hoteliers to the online selling opportunities and the huge potential it holds for them.

Ibiza is a small island where the local travel agents have been the only distribution channels for hoteliers. With online travel gaining momentum globally and OTAs offering attractive distribution options, many local hoteliers are eager to explore and make the most of online opportunities. Some however are wary and still very tied to tour operation contracts and guaranties and cannot play with their prices and allotments.

Various OTAs did presentations for hoteliers, showcasing benefits they offer and how they help them reach out to wider audiences. We did a presentation on how to sell online and importance of managing channels efficiently. Specific focus was paid on online distribution and marketing initiatives that will help hotels generate bookings and garner better revenues.

Overall it was a great networking platform for all involved to come together and share ideas and experiences for the benefit of others. 


Cristina Hernández is Sales Manager – Spain at eRevMax and is responsible for sales of RateTiger products in the region. She can be reached at cristinas@ratetiger.com
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Road to Effective Channel Management – Part 2: Know Your Artillery

We looked at today’s economics and selling requirements in Road to Effective Channel Management Part 1. We also saw the importance of customer segregation and the need to offer right product to the right people through the right channel. Now we move forward to look at various other parameters and tools that would help you manage online distribution with ease and efficiency.

Own website and Booking engine

Your own website will give guests the chance to discover more about the hotel directly from you and not third parties. The website should be user-friendly with clear descriptions, photos, guest reviews and directions to the hotel.

Integrate a booking engine and you can begin capturing more direct bookings to avoid commission charges from Online Travel Agents (OTAs).

If you want your property to build its own brand and stand out from the rest, you may want to invest in search engines through Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to allow travellers to find you easier.

If you implement web analytics you will be able to assess where your visits are coming from – but be aware that it may take up to a year before you begin seeing consistent trends.

Online partners and GDS

Effective channel management is about managing multiple channels and optimising the bookings and revenue you can achieve from these. The days of putting all your eggs in one basket are well and truly gone.

You need to remain competitive and the easiest way is by distributing inventory to multiple sales channels.

Begin by identifying a few essential online channels where you would like to get bookings. You may feel you need to be on the popular OTAs like Expedia, booking.com, lastminute.com, or on more local websites or specialist boutique channels.

When choosing the channels you must keep your proposition in mind; why sell an upmarket room on a budget website? Once you have identified your first channels you have made your first step to successful channel management.

Research social and digital marketing

There’s no escaping the digital revolution and with this comes a multitude of websites, social networks and interactive channels that should be considered in the hotel’s long-term strategy.

You need to identify prospects on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or more specific channels; be it wedding and honeymoon or relocation websites.

By assessing the sales potential here you can also assess your hotels reputation through online reviews and at this stage begin responding positively to guests’ feedback.

Price shopping

Proposition is the name of the game and price is the leading element of its value.

You need to know your competitors and their rates to help you position your rates accordingly.

Hoteliers who observe and benchmark competitor rates are more likely to set the right rates for the market and therefore secure those additional bookings. It is important you do not out price your hotel either too low or too high then the market value.

By constantly monitoring rates both for immediate bookings and in the future you can ensure that you have a highly visible proposition to secure more advanced bookings. 

Price shopping data allows you to respond more readily and adapt to market conditions. Today rates are dynamic and not linear, by keeping an eye on competitor rates will keep you in the game.

Check out Road to Effective Channel Management Part 3.

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V Jornadas Universitarias – Revenue Management: A new management philosophy to crisis management

Last month I attended the V Jornadas Universitarias which took place at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid. The event focused on various hotel technologies and how the application of these technologies along with revenue management techniques can help hoteliers to cope up in difficult times.

With an excellent speaker line-up the event turned out to be very fruitful for all attendees. Professionals from companies like Vincci Hotels, NH Hotels, InterContinental Madrid Hotel (IHG Group), RateTiger, Marketing Surfers/Buzzturistic, ITH, Hosteltur and Sol Meliá shared their knowledge and experience and gave fantastic presentations on their chosen subjects. My presentation focused on the importance of rate shopping, benchmarking and the future of hotel business intelligence.

Today’s paradigm in the hotel business is focused on price optimization where:
•    Price is a function of demand and demand is a function of price, and 
•    Decisions should be based on demand, availability and relative competitor price positioning. 

Apart from the current challenges of managing data and various systems, hoteliers are further facing the obstacle of silos throughout our companies. We only get to see a small piece of the big picture. The need is for, and in a few cases the trend is towards, a strategic integration of revenue management, marketing and guest analytics.

In a world where consumer segmentation is becoming difficult and distribution is becoming increasingly complex, how will hotel executives keep up? Through business intelligence!
 
Business intelligence is moving towards providing:
•    Better industry benchmarks centered on profitability, not just revenue
•    Market relevant price optimization tied to distribution strategy
•    Behavioural economics and neuromarketing embedded into pricing and marketing decisions
•    Integrated technology with CRS, RMS, PMS, POS, social media, loyalty and sales data all blended into one system and/or data source

Hence what we try to derive here is that – to achieve better benchmarking, optimized pricing and integrated behavioral economics, hoteliers need to focus on integrated technology systems.

Further the conference saw hoteliers discussing the growing trend of new positions coming into being – the likes of Community Manager, Channel Manager and Guest Experience Manager are making inroads into the organizational structure of companies.

Pilar Sanchez Aita is Sales Manager – Spain & Portugal at eRevMax and is responsible for sales of RateTiger products in the region. She is based out of Madrid and can be reached at pilara@ratetiger.com.


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RateTiger @ ITB Berlin 2011

As the organizers describe – “ITB Berlin is THE B2B-Platform for trade visitors – an excellent opportunity to meet business partners and to do business. For all other visitors ITB Berlin is a wonderful possibility to discover the whole world within a few hours.” I completely agree with the event’s definition based on my experience at ITB Berlin 2011.

This year had a buzz like no previous that I had attended – this was my third time in Berlin for this mammoth travel event and no longer did we have people wander past our stand asking us what is channel management? Instead hotels wanted and needed a channel manager. This was such an amazing positive change for us and the industry. 

We had over 6 journalists come by for conversations with us to discuss some of the key trends in social media, new digital sales techniques and integrated channel management technologies. Many were very interested in the NH Hotels implementation of our tools.

Siew Hoon of Web in Travel stopped by and we had a vibrant conversation on how we can best educate hotels and make them into more informed buyers – so it looks like I have a lot of work on my hands to create more content and informative articles.

Among the various topics of discussion, I attended two sessions as part of the hospitality distribution programme; Holiday Hotels and Online Booking Behaviour that showed how the online buyer has changed and should not be stereotyped however it did find that expensive luxury trips are still more frequently being purchased offline – from findings by GfK Research Panels.

I also attended Social Media and Mobile Devices and the types of people using these for booking and research; it was interesting that only a few years ago we were saying that ‘nearly’ 50% of travel is booked online, now we are saying ‘over’ 50% of travellers are engaging with social media and consumer travel reviews that is having a major affect on purchase decisions both before and during the holiday.

We had so much to talk about and so many developments for the business that the discussions were much more diverse than just hotel channel management – this makes me look forward to next year’s event.

Ryan Haynes is the Marketing Head at eRevMax and is responsible for driving all PR and Marketing activities of RateTiger and eRevMax brands globally. Ryan is based out of London and can be reached at ryanh@ratetiger.com

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BAHA: Revenue Management Breakfast Workshop

The Hospitality Revenue Management Community of BAHA organized an open workshop on 4th March 2011 at the Mint Hotel Tower of London.

The aim of this breakfast workshop was to bring together Revenue Managers and those connected to it, to discuss and debate current industry challenges in a way that was lively and participative, yet still challenging and educational.

One of the major challenges facing Revenue Management is the future ‘pipeline’ of talent. Hence the community invited a selection of RM students to give them a chance to interact with current professionals, build relationships with potential employers and gain valuable insight into the realities of the role.

There were 5 workshops held in parallel sessions, namely Long Term Impact of Price Slashing, Customer Relationship Tactics, Total Revenue Management, Centralization of RM and Market Segmentation. My colleague Stefan and I took part in the Total Revenue Management workshop and found it really interesting and worthwhile. We had a great discussion and stressed upon how selling efficiently online can help Revenue Managers achieve targets. We found the event to be a good opportunity to meet industry peers and like all BAHA initiatives, it was well organized.


Sunaina Jagtiani is Sales Manager – UK at eRevMax and is responsible for sales of RateTiger products in the region. She is based out of London and can be reached at sunainaj@ratetiger.com

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Sales and Marketing Online, November 2010

The Sales and Marketing Online was a one-day conference in Warsaw, Poland organized on 16th November 2010. With various sessions focused on online distribution, there were speakers from across the industry including the likes of Daniel Łukaszewicz – HOOBI, Alexander Ryll – Avvio, Jakob Riegger – TrustYou, Brendan May – IdeaS as well as Keith Povah – RateTiger.

RateTiger was invited to present in the Plenum session on “Channel Management” and the presentation title was “How does online distribution help improve Yield Management strategies”. Keith gave interesting examples on how our client hoteliers have leveraged online channel management strategies to increase occupancy and revenue.  The presentation by Brendan from Ideas was also very well received and he mentioned how their partnership with RateTiger brings added value to hoteliers.

Over 55 delegates comprising hotel owners, Revenue Managers, Managing Directors and Sales Managers attended the event. The delegates received us very well due to the relevant content of our presentation. We were also invited to conduct a workshop on RTSuite products which was a great success.

The organizers Concept Media conducted a survey and found that 26 hotels out of 55 attending hoteliers wanted to learn more about RTSuite products and RateTiger. Overall it was a great event which provided us with good networking opportunity especially with small to medium sized groups.

Aldona Kaczmarczyk
Sales Manager, Poland

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Hoteliers’ Connect: Bangalore

Earlier this month, I got an opportunity to host leading Bangalore hoteliers at an evening event organized by RateTiger. The idea was to provide a social platform for hoteliers to connect over cocktails while sharing vignettes of their channel management experiences.

With 25 hoteliers present, it was a cozy get-together with every member being very warm and forthcoming with their strategies, suggestions, challenges and queries. Some of our client hoteliers were present too and were happy to share their experience of new channel management modules that they have been using in RateTiger.

As the evening wore on, everyone embarked on a stimulating discussion on revenue strategies. It turned out to be a productive day for them, they also realized that they have not really interacted earlier and many had met their counterparts from other hotels for the first time. They just knew and viewed each other as competitors and not as industry peers. I was so glad to have modified their outlook and they were appreciative of our effort for having hosted such an interesting meet.

Chancery Pavilion was the chosen venue for the evening and being a RateTiger user they were happy to be part of this event. I look forward to doing similar events in other Indian and Asian cities so as to help Revenue Managers meet up outside work and share their valuable experiences with each other. And with our technology, I am sure we can further help revenue managers achieve increased online sales and optimize revenue.

Sudhir Ghildiyal is Sales Manager – Asia Pacific at eRevMax and is responsible for sales of RateTiger products in the region. He is based out of India and can be reached at  sudhirg@erevmax.com

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RateTiger – Paradores Training Day

It was a successful day of training with Paradores after a long road of joint collaboration. The training was organized jointly with Juan Manuel Merino and Javier Blanco from Paradores and Nuria Bermejo, Key Account Manager RateTiger with me coordinating the session.

Over 70 people attended the session at Parador de Alcala de Henares on September 13, 2010, eager to learn and start using our tools. Optimism filled the room with full support to incorporate it as they have the certainty that RateTiger provides an opportunity to manage their online sales and obtain privileged information to reinforce the strategy of online growth to Paradores group.

Paradores de Turismo is a publicly funded limited company with eight decades of history and which currently manages more than 90 hotel establishments thanks to the work performed on a daily basis by its thousands of employees. Many Paradores properties are located in nature reserves and in historic buildings, such as castles, palaces, convents and monasteries. 
  
One of the aspects that has endured in time and which characterizes Paradores de Turismo is its mission –
“Paradores is a tourism policy instrument which projects the image of modernity and quality of our tourism abroad and which contributes to the territorial integration, to the recovery and maintenance of Historical and Artistic Heritage and to the conservation and enjoyment of natural areas, all the while functioning as a driving force behind the set of revitalizing actions in areas with reduced tourism or economic activity.”



A corporation with just one shareholder, the Spanish state, Paradores de Turismo is also an instrument of the government’s tourism policy, as well as a leading company in the Spanish tourism sector which obtains important benefits which nourish the public objectives for which this company was created.


Pilar Sanchez Aita is Sales Manager – Spain & Portugal at eRevMax and is responsible for sales of RateTiger products in the region. She is based out of Spain and can be reached at pilara@ratetiger.com

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NBTA International Convention & Exposition 2010

Earlier this month, I was in Houston to attend the International Convention organized by the National Business Travel Association, the leading Association for the corporate travel community. The event included a full schedule of educational seminars as well as an exhibition floor for travel buyers & sellers to interact.

I was excited to see a gathering of over 6000 attendees from all sectors of the corporate travel vertical including corporate travel executives, airlines, hotel groups, transportation companies, corporate travel management companies, meeting planners and technology companies.

The convention began with the announcement of NBTA’s plan to aggressively pursue a more global approach and its rechristening to Global Business Travel Association (GBTA). This was followed by educational sessions covering various aspects of corporate travel.

Key speakers focused on the recovery of the industry over the past 3 quarters with an expected increase in rates for 2011. One of the main topics of conversation was the increase in unbundled fees in the airline industry and the possible implementation of these in the hotel industry to give hotels the opportunity to increase revenues.

I found NBTA Convention to be the perfect platform to introduce RateTiger’s real-time hotel rate benchmarking tool – RTCorp to the corporate travel managers. The corporate travel industry is at a point where corporates need to be able to benchmark their contracted rates so that they can obtain the best possible rates for their companies.

Traditionally corporate travel managers used to contract their hotels once a year for the year. However with the advent of hotel yield management, hotel rates are changing consistently, sometimes on a daily or even hourly basis. RTCorp gives travel managers the opportunity to evaluate their contracted rates against the OTA lowest published rates and provides them with the reports necessary to approach and re-contract their hotels.

Our presence at NBTA helped educate the travel managers as to the value of benchmarking their contracted rates against the OTA rates. Our direct meetings generated a lot of interest amongst the attendees and we found corporate travel managers understanding the need for a benchmarking tool to help them negotiate with their travel suppliers harder and get a better and open deal.

Overall it was a great experience and kudos to NBTA for putting together a very well organized and meaningful event. I look forward to attending the next convention but with a different name – the GBTA International Convention 2011 😉

Mark Neter is International Sales Manager at eRevMax. He is based out of US and can be reached at markn@ratetiger.com

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BHA Annual Luncheon

The BHA Luncheon event was an extension of our partnership with British Hotel Association. It took place in the Great Room of the Grosvenor House Hotel on 29th June and had a great turnout of over 700. 
We had the pleasure of inviting both clients and partners to intermingle over a great meal; we were joined by Bridgestreet Apartments, English Rose Hotels, Expedia, The Leonard Hotel, Supranational Hotels, and St. Giles Hotel. 
The BHA Luncheon this year was more special because it ended one era and welcomed another as the CEO Bob Cotton stepped down and the current CEO Ufi Ibrahim stood at the helm.

For us, this was another great opportunity to re-establish contacts with many hotel owners and directors and network with industry peers.

Casey Davy is Sales Manager – UK at eRevMax. He is responsible for sales of RateTiger products in the region. Casey is based out of London and can be reached at caseyd@ratetiger.com