Powering the Hotel Industry's Recovery Through Effective Revenue Management

The hotel industry is on the road to recovery, but it hasn't progressed as far as it could. Tourist spending in the U.S during 2010 grew 11 percent, according to U.S. Commerce Department¹, with a large amount of that increase ending up in hotel cash registers. Although an encouraging metric, it wasn't enough to make 2010 the recovery year that many predicted: the hotel industry is still not at the level it was during the era of prosperity before the recession, leaving many wondering: Is there a better way forward for the industry than the path it has been following?


The answer is a resounding YES. As revealed in REVPAR GURU's new guidebook, "Rethinking Revenue Management: A Collection of Articles," hotel revenue management processes and strategies worldwide have much room for improvement. All too often, revenue management has been treated as an inflexible process of setting a price for a room and hoping a customer will accept it. But using sophisticated RM software, hoteliers have a powerful, flexible tool that provides a much wider scope for customer acquisition, retention, and most enticingly, revenue maximization. And today, RM hasn't been utilized to anywhere near its potential.

"Rethinking Revenue Management: A Collection of Articles" provides the road map to reaching that potential. The guide explores how hoteliers can effectively master the three key principles for maximizing RevPAR: understanding, anticipating and influencing the customer. Additionally, the guide examines why hotel pricing is - or SHOULD be like - the stock market, and illustrates how this can be accomplished through good RM software and a savvy, proactive revenue manager.

The guide also provides numerous easy-to-implement tricks to boost any hotel's visibility and attractiveness on the OTAs. For example, many hotels aren't aware that page placement (in the results page of the OTAs) is of upmost importance for increasing bookings and RevPAR; in fact, there is one specific page position that consistently produces room bookings - and, counter-intuitively, it is not on the first page. Considering that 60 percent of all leisure, and 40 percent of business travel bookings were made online in 2009, it's obvious the internet is now a massive engine driving the market. That information isn't only useful, it's absolutely critical.

To thrive in business, the modern revenue manager must yield to practicality, optimizing customer needs and purchasing trends, while anticipating consumer resolutions - all in a rapidly changing environment. Revenue management is a complex and ever-evolving art which is difficult to master. With fresh thinking and thoughtful analysis on the subject, this guide can help make it that much easier - download "Rethinking Revenue Management: A Collection of Articles" here