REPORT FROM THE U.S.—Both hotel sales and marketing and revenue management teams are focused on booking more business on the lowest cost channels for the highest rates possible. Affecting their ability to do so over the past 10 years is the availability of information among guests, panelists said during a webinar.
Given such transparency, marketers and revenue managers have been forced to develop a symbiotic relationship and are “no longer at odds with each other,” said Scott Pusillo, VP of sales and revenue management at Viceroy Hotel Group, during the webinar titled “Through the looking glass: The revenue manager’s adventure into sales and marketing,” which was presented jointly by Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International, Hotel News Now and HNN’s parent company, STR.
Viceroy Hotel Group lumps marketers and revenue managers together under the same umbrella. This is a way to make sure decisions are based on data, not feelings, Pusillo said.
“When everyone in the commercial landscape is on equal footing, decisions are made much more based on data and less on emotion,” he said.
There are three roles of revenue management: to educate, participate and strategize. “You can’t hold onto the knowledge just for the sake of job security,” Pusillo said. “Participate by getting out there with the buyer. Be the face of the business. Strategizing means bringing all the parties into the decision process.”
Revenue managers must convey these three roles to sales managers when trying to maximize profitability, Pusillo said. For example, revenue managers should show the sales team on which customer segments to focus and the accompanying pricing considerations that go with each, he said.
“It allows for more qualified prospecting,” Pusillo added, which pushes profit levels higher.
Ways to strategize and optimize
Revenue managers can use their skills with data analytics to help their sales and marketing counterparts sift through vast swaths of information, said Ed Skapinok, VP of sales and marketing at Hostmark Hospitality Group.
“Sometimes we can get distracted by the noise or narrowly focused when digesting all the details we have available,” he said.
Revenue managers and marketers alike should focus more on “leading indicators” as opposed to “lagging indicators,” such as historical data resources such as STR’s STAR reports or profit-and-loss statements that relay long-term outcomes over time.
Given the speed of information dissemination today, hoteliers must now monitor real-time and forward-looking data, also known as leading indicators, Skapinok said.
Examples of leading indicators include pace reports, pipeline velocity data, in-house and arrivals, conversion rates and service feedback, he explained.
“If you’re managing by just looking at the lagging indicators, that’s like driving a car by looking through the rearview mirror,” Skapinok continued.
While using in-house and arrivals might seem old school, Skapinok said the data can be useful. “You can see guests with favorable stay patterns, non-familiar companies.”
Looking at future reservations and guest feedback also have proven fruitful. “Future reservations allow us to yield better. Accumulation of guests’ likes and dislikes can help build on a hotel’s strength,” Skapinok said.
There are a variety of external sources to help optimize revenues, including market data, Web analytics, social channels and competitive offers, he added. For example, hoteliers should be looking at how properties in their competitive set are formulating promotions.
“Look at what competitors are offering. Maybe they share a promo and three weeks later their rates are higher,” he said.
Also important are social channels to leverage things like social biasing and engagement, Skapinok said. Social biasing is the tendency of survey respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others.