Being a hospitality revenue manager isn’t an easy job. You’re constantly analyzing, strategizing, deciding, executing, streamlining, and monitoring…etc. You must generate new business while maintaining existing clients, balance your business mix and then manage all the stakeholders. It’s… a lot of work.
But, that’s where automation can help. The right technology can reduce the amount of time spent on repetitive mundane tasks while streamlining all other strategic processes, making it far easier to capture new revenue for you and those stakeholders.
It makes increasing RevPAR a lot easier.
RevPAR, also known as revenue per available room, is an incredibly important metric for the majority of revenue managers. It multiplies a hotel’s average daily room rate by its occupancy rate, totaling a number that represents how able a property is to fill available rooms at an average (or above average) rate.
Hotel automation technology can benefit RevPAR in a number of ways:
- By analyzing competitor rates to book at optimal price points
- Automatically adjusting room pricing to fill rooms during slow seasons
- Accurately forecasting to distribute optimal pricing structures
- Balancing the number of non-refundable reservations offered to increase bookings without increasing cancellations
See the benefits of hotel automation technology in action: Anantara Hotels, Resorts & Spas achieves 15% RevPAR growth with IDeaS Pricing System
It saves you time by automating manual tasks.
Manual tasks take up a large amount of time for most revenue managers. This includes duties like setting prices, determining and reacting to staffing needs, promoting available inventory, documenting strategic initiatives, and more. Not only that, but many of these responsibilities are done using unwieldy spreadsheets.
Automating many of these tasks is possible with revenue management software (RMS) — especially tasks related to strategic price setting (and subsequent revenue boosting).
It improves staff retention.
According to the American Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the hospitality industry has one of the highest turnover rates of any sector. In 2021, they reported that the accommodation industry was facing a turnover rate of 86.3%. Over the last year, this number has started to trend downward, but it is still far greater than the 47.2% national average.
Long story short: there’s a staff retention problem in the hospitality industry and hotel automation can help. How?
- It will help you automate the management of staffing needs, leading to fewer employees facing burnout or overwork
- It will help streamline hotel operations and improve customer experience by making it easier for them to make reservations and payments, check in and out, and use amenities
- During check-in, manual data entry can lead to mistakes that lead to unhappy customers — automating those processes helps remove the potential pitfalls of human error so customer ire doesn’t get passed on to staff
It simplifies the tracking of KPIs.
Revenue managers know better than anyone how many different key performance indicators (KPIs) can be tracked. That’s the main problem: how to choose and then, once you choose, how to track without getting bogged down by complicated spreadsheets. The answer is to use automation technology that not only gives insight into the data that matters most to you, but organizes it in an easy-to-use, all-in-one solution format.
If you dig into the data analyzed by the G3 Revenue Management Solutions (G3 RMS), you’ll find the option to choose from various KPIs to determine which is most relevant to your business.
We recommend starting with the following KPIs as a revenue manager interested in maximizing revenue:
- Revenue available per available room (RevPAR). Mentioned above, this KPI is often used to measure property performance versus competitors within the market while helping ensure rooms are being accurately priced.
- Net revenue per available room (NetRevPAR) which is the RevPAR that accounts for the cost of acquiring a booking such as agent commissions, transaction fees and so on.
- Average daily rate (ADR). This KPI measures the average rate for rooms sold during designated dates, indicating whether you’re selling rooms for the right price at the right time.
- Occupancy rate (by day, week, and/or month). The percentage of occupied rooms at your property for a chosen period of time. The higher this percentage, the higher the likelihood that you’re meeting revenue goals.
- Average length of stay (ALOS). By dividing the number of room nights from your property’s bookings, you calculate your ALOS. This KPI is significant, in part, because it provides labor insights. If guests stay at your property for longer, labor costs shrink because there’s less daily upkeep needed.
Interested in digging deeper on KPIs for revenue management? Check out this post: The Next-Gen Revenue Management KPIs Hoteliers Should Be Tracking
It translates market data for you.
Your expertise is limited to everything you know: training, experience, schooling. There’s only so much a single person — or even a team — can know off the top of their heads. Hotel automation tools are aided by their ability to analyze and extrapolate trends from dynamic market and hotel data sources.
This greatly benefits forecasting and demand pattern analysis and allows revenue managers using these tools to more accurately predict how, when, and where they’ll be able to achieve the most revenue per booking.
It helps optimize your business mix to prioritize revenue.
No strategy, left stagnant, is going to serve your hotel or hospitality business long-term. To succeed in such a dynamic industry, your approach to filling rooms must also be dynamic.
One of the greatest benefits of hotel automation for revenue managers are the many ways it allows you to stay agile. By consistently looking at data — both within your properties and the industry at large — the right technology will reliably present you with new ideas and opportunities for revenue growth.
Better overbooking management.
Overbooking is a constant struggle, isn’t it? Booking enough to ensure your rooms stay full while toeing the line of acceptable expected cancellations, no shows, early departures, and group wash – it can feel nearly impossible when done manually.
The right technology not only uses automated booking and price-setting tools to help you avoid too much overbooking in the first place, but it also gives you the data you need to analyze why it happens when it does. That way you can get your team together to look at the entire selling process and see where your processes need refinement. More internal knowledge means more actionable strategic insight… which, in the end, leads to a better booking experience for both you and your customers.
Interested in hearing expert advice on overbooking? Check out this post: Overcoming Those Overbooking Fears
It enables revenue managers to do more with less.
Times are tight right now. To be able to do more with less, it’s not unreasonable to need a little help. You’ve outgrown spreadsheets and need more power, precision, and predictability. You also need to be able to share that information with your managers and executives to track the progress you’ve made, allowing you to accomplish far more with far less.
Start doing more with less and benefit from the many benefits of hotel automation with a system that helps you save time, enhance productivity and so much more.
Find the right solution for your property today.
