Hotel Revenue Management: Boost Hotel Bookings and Get More Revenue

The secret to a successful business lies in how you manage your hotel business. Pricing and customer satisfaction are the most important variables in determining the revenue of your hotel business. As India is a price-sensitive market, you need to keep your hotel room price competitive. Forecasting prices for the upcoming seasons will help in maximizing the effectiveness of your strategies.

For maximizing the revenue through your hotel resources, you need to balance the demand and supply and focus more on customer satisfaction.

Why is Revenue Management Important: Let’s Find Out

Cloud-based hotel management systems have become the driving force for many small and large healthcare setups. Rather than crunching numbers into spreadsheets, your admin staff can now focus on creating tactics and strategies. Top hotel revenue management systems are further leveraging the artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to remove complexity and simplify revenue management processes.

1. Minimized Ownership Cost

With a cloud-based hotel management system, you don’t have to spend time and resources on in-house server, hardware maintenance and exorbitant software licenses. With a cloud-based system, you can further save on staff training costs and focus more on your core competencies.

• No dedicated IT infrastructure
• Staff training can be made simpler
• Cloud-based systems require minimal subscription fee

2. Improved Operational Efficiency

Operational efficiency increases when every ongoing process is in place. Technologies like hotel management software make help reduce mundane tasks so that your hotel staff can focus more on delivering guest experience than updating excel sheets.

• With cloud-based hotel management systems, you can reduce the time spent on mundane tasks and connect with your prospects in real-time.
• Manual dependencies are reduced considerably and you can update rates across different booking platforms with a single click.
• Data can be accessed across all concerned departments in real time to improve operational efficiency.

3. Seamless Integration with Third-Party Solutions

Cloud-based hotel management solutions removes complexities from integration with third-party solutions. Because of the open API, a cloud-based solution seamlessly integrates with tools to manage email marketing, business intelligence, club membership management and reputation management. Easy integration with third-party solutions means higher productivity and revenue.

• Business intelligence & analytics solutions
• Revenue management systems
• Marketing tools
• Channel partner program management

Effective Hotel Revenue Management Strategies

To effectively apply the concept of hotel revenue management, you need to analyse the big data related to your property and its business module:

• Target groups
• Market information
• Past occupancy rates
• Revenue in the past quarters

At the same time, you need to consider those external factors which impact room occupancy:

• Weather patterns
• Upcoming holidays and events
• Competition in your area
• Pricing strategy of your competitors

As demand patterns have become more complex, it’s important that you adopt these unique tactics.

• Leverage Events & Attractions

Guests at your hotel are quite likely to be interested in local events and attractions. So, why not offer them additional services and exclusive packages that cover events and attractions along with the stay. This way, you can ensure that your guests enjoy their and prefer to stay again during the next visit.

• Sell Other Hotel Products

Hotel room is your biggest resource for revenue. However, there must be other amenities on your site which can help generate additional revenue. You can also collaborate with external vendors to set up stalls where your guests can indulge in shopping spree. Also, you can arrange events within your premise in association with external vendors.

• Choose the Right Pricing Strategy

You can adopt different pricing strategies depending on the competition and the demand. Competitive pricing strategy often works when you have something unique to offer. This works more during peak seasons when people are looking for an attractive offer.

However, during slow seasons, the discount strategy works better. It’s better to have customers at your hotel than keeping rooms empty in off seasons.

• Provide Incentives for Direct Bookings

You need to have a strong presence of your hotel across different distribution channels and OTAs to tap on booking opportunities. At the same time, it’s a sensible approach to maximize direct booking. After all, it helps save on commission, which you have to pay to third parties.

To promote direct bookings, you can run programs where you offer freebies to people coming through your website. Also, you can run loyalty programs for those who opt for direct bookings and ensure their repeat visits.

• Use Automation Solutions (Hotel Management Software)

Hotel management systems help achieve higher operational efficiency by automating everything from room bookings to rate management and payments. It streamlines every hotel management process to ensure that not a single revenue opportunity goes unattended.

Using hotel management systems, you can manage and critical guest information and use big data sets to derive insights about their preferences. With hotel revenue management software, you can create flexible check-in timetable and update room availability automatically. All those processes which are directly associated with revenue management can be streamlined for better opportunity.

Best Hotel Revenue Management Software for Windows & Mac

To begin with, you can go for different free and open-source hotel management software.

With growing technological innovations and rising customer expectations, businesses in the hospitality industry need to be more tech-enabled. Hotel revenue management systems can help identify problem areas and address them. This way, you can fulfil your guests’ expectations and drive loyalty.

There are a few free hotel revenue management software, which help quantify customer satisfaction and provides better analysis of big data sets. The best free hotel management software comes with features to manage even the slightest of operations effortlessly.

We’ve summed up the ten best open source and free hotel revenue management software solutions to get you started.

• Abacre Hotel Management System
• HotelDruid
• KWHotel Free
• NOBEDS
• Qlo
• OTA Hotel Management
• RoomKey PMS
• eZee Ultimate
• ASI FrontDesk
• True Hotel Management

We’ve listed down their features, pros and cons along with the price to upgrade, so that you can make the right choice. Let’s dive in to know more about best free hotel management software.

Must-Have Elements of Revenue Management

Managing your hotel reputation is vital, as people often develop the reputation of your property by reading reviews online. To ensure that there are mostly positive reviews about your hotel property, you need to adopt a proactive approach.

It’s better to check on your guests’ satisfaction level while they are staying on your property. This way, you have a higher chance to acknowledge their concerns and fix issues.

1. Keep Tab on Review Sites Online

There are different review sites online where your guests might leave a review about your hotel property. It’s important that you check all significant websites and social pages to know the conversation around your brand. Juts ensure that no review goes unattended, as it might leave a negative impression.

2. Acknowledge & Fix Issues, If Any

Ask your guests to share their review during the stay and at the time of check-out. This way, you can acknowledge your hotel guests’ concerns and fix them before it’s too late.

Also, request your guests to leave a review about the stay in your hotel on their preferred review site. This will not be a time-consuming process for your guests, who can post a review while they are waiting for the print receipt. 

3. Conduct a Website Refresh

With regular website maintenance, you can update property descriptions and provide information about your latest facilities. Regular website checks further assist with refreshing dated photographs and broken links. With up-to-date information on your website, you can deliver the reservations timely and generate higher revenue.

4. Create Hotel Checklists

In order to take control of all ongoing processes within your hotel, you need to adopt an organized approach. With pre-set checklists for check-in and check-out processes, along with monthly housekeeping inspection can help significantly in achieving guests’ expectations.

To ensure hotel sustainability and keep up with the rapidly changing business world, you can also create checklists for your staff. This will ensure that your employees abide by policies to fulfil customer expectations.

Wrapping Up: Revenue Management in Hotel Industry

Most importantly, you need to anticipate consumer demands and spending habits to manage your room pricing accordingly. Informed adjustments can further be made when you know the expectations of your customers. Big data sets can be analysed with hotel management software to help devise effective revenue management strategies. Consider the past data, weather forecasts and other industry metrics to sustain in the industry for long.