Revenue Maximization with RevPAR Guru

According to the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council, cutbacks and anxiety are the two primary factors that affect the hospitality industry’s marketing budget. Despite the economic downturn, it is expected that hotel revenue managers will still set aside a reasonable amount of budget for marketing initiatives. The main difference is that expenses will be more tightly controlled and monitored. Hotels are now mainly focused on hospitality revenue management, hotel yield, and profit optimization.

Revenue enhancement can occur with the right enterprise solution, sales force automation, and effective distribution management tools. About half of the hotel revenue managers surveyed said that their budget will either stay the same or experience increases this 2009. One-third expected only a slight increase while 8.2 percent expected an increase of more than 10 percent. Signs of retrenchment are evident but overall, hoteliers are committed to their employees.

Investments are being made in retraining existing employees to become familiar with rate positioning software, web sites management, booking engine, forecasting software, inventory software, and other types of hospitality technology. In this digital age where the main goal of most businesses is profit optimization, harvesting greater efficiencies in hotel electronic sales will likely be rewarded.

Donovan Neale-May, the Executive Director of CMO, has said that “Marketers are not running scared from the economy”. On the other hand, they are actually paying closer attention to the needs of their customers in order to react to the changes in the hospitality market. The solution lies in creating internal efficiencies, having better customer insights, and integrating the system with sales in order to achieve profit optimization. Hoteliers need to realize that boosting hotel sales requires better go-to-market efficiencies though controls and analysis.

It is likewise important to look into the effectiveness of digital media. A lot of hotel revenue managers are interested in increasing their online bookings through the use of proven social media strategies. But they should recognize that digital marketing is continually evolving. The hotel industry needs to evolve with it. Together with social media marketing, using real-time software solutions such as RevPAR Guru is also critical. It enables hotel revenue managers to have a detailed operational management system, track inventory, and update prices according to market demand.

When it comes to technology, the hospitality industry should not be left behind. As it stands right now, a lot of hotels are struggling to catch up with market and technological changes. By getting a software application such as RevPAR Guru, market demand can easily be met with the appropriate supply.