The competitive landscape in today's hospitality industry is more intense than ever. Hoteliers need new ways to differentiate themselves in the eye of the customer to provide world-class service, while still driving profitability across every segment and business unit. But despite the fact that almost every hotel manages multiple revenue streams, team members within each stream still tend to make pricing decisions based on the impact of their line of business only, which is a losing strategy. This article will discuss the benefits of holistic revenue management and the strategy of Total Revenue Performance. READ MORE

The hotel and service industry evolves in the front of the house all the time to meet the ever-changing expectations of our guest. Sometimes these expectations can start eating away at the bottom line, which good managers adapt to and change these environments to encourage a good rapport. But we have seen a change in the business aspect of the hospitality industry. Not only have guest's demands sometimes become unreasonable, our service supply change is being disrupted by ever increasing back of the house costs. The standard percentage of goods, labor and debt on our Profit and Loss statements are obliterating the Net profit line. This has been concerning investors and managers, making our careers as managers of revenue, a juggling act. READ MORE

Soft Branding is the new “it thing” in hotel marketing. Much has been written about how it works for developers, owners and operators, but the more important question is whether and how they work for travelers. In this article we look at the fundamental structure two of the brands that are successful in the soft brands space, and view this in terms of consumer's functional and emotional needs. The answer, from a consumer point of view, might surprise you. Is soft branding the answer to everything? READ MORE

The best way for a hotel to thrive is by really understanding its customers and what they really want. We make too many assumptions about what our customers want and how they interpret our marketing and services. Kodak, for example, buried its own invention of a digital camera because it thought customers wanted printed pictures. Far too late they realized that what customers really wanted was a convenient way to capture and revisit special moments. It didn't have to be print. This article shows ways you can use market research and tools like personas to identify, understand and successfully cater to your ideal customers. READ MORE

Increasingly, hospitality marketers are turning their attention away from Baby Boomers towards gratifying the instantaneous needs of the Millennials. There are currently around 79 million Millennials in North America - that is three million more than Baby Boomers who are predicted to dwindle to just 58 million by 2030. Otherwise known as Generation Y, they were born between 1980 and 1999, children of the Digital Age. This article focuses on the behavior of this generation, and offers some tips on how hotels can be creative in attracting, satisfying and retaining this demanding demographic. READ MORE

Analytics and personalization are more relevant to the Customer Travel Planning Journey than ever before. As these factors evolve in parallel with innovations in technology, unique value propositions become crucial for every conversation and conversion. For the world-class brands we serve, every ad, offer and delivery should consist of more than just a currency exchange - more than a discounted room rate or property value points. Instead, travel brands need to understand where each customer stands within the travel journey - from search to shopping to booking. We need to develop conversations with our prospects by unifying the customer experience across devices and guiding each customer toward the next stage of the journey. READ MORE

Hotel owners wrestle with numerous costs in the operation of their businesses, from staffing to paying sales taxes to expenses associated with maintaining the building. Fortunately, the federal tax code equips businesses in the hospitality industry with an array of incentives and strategies to help offset these costs. However, these potentially lucrative opportunities for tax savings are often overlooked by businesses that are unaware how to capture them. By reexamining their tax-planning strategies, hoteliers may uncover substantial savings that will reduce their tax burdens and improve the cash flow of their businesses. READ MORE

As a revenue management professional, it can become all too easy to get bogged down in focusing on rooms revenue in efforts to increase ADR and drive RevPAR. After all, these are the metrics by which we compare against our comp set on weekly STR reports and, quite often, the numbers used to grade our performance. However, as the practice of revenue management matures, and an increasing number of technology companies are providing the industry with newer and more optimal functionality, the focus needs to shift from primarily revenue generation to optimizing total profitability of the whole hotel. READ MORE

Classical and even more current revenue optimization practices and technologies have focused too narrowly on maximizing room revenue, and more recently, to minimizing the distribution and marketing costs associated with that revenue. Expanding the same practice to other revenue streams has been a natural next step for some revenue managers and systems, but the higher that revenues go, the more profit margin that seems to leak out of the balance sheet. A new practice called Hospitality Enterprise Optimization, using the proven analytical abilities of revenue managers and the systems at their disposal, will go a long way to finding that lost profit. READ MORE

The ever changing distribution landscape can be challenging to maneuver. Costly connectivity solutions often result in some degree of manual management of varied channels, which is time consuming. The good news is that a hotel usually finds a way to get content, rates, and availability out to the customer in some way. The bad news is that, often, this information is not optimized for particular customers, which can result in a lost booking. Understanding more about which customers book what sites and delivering the content and availability optimally to them is critical to a hotel's success at any distribution point. READ MORE

Is it a mirage or are hotel condominiums making a strong comeback from the depths of the recession? Like everything else in real estate, it depends on location, location, location. In a select few cities, where the residential real estate market is only surpassed by the hotel industry (Miami, Los Angeles, and New York City), development is strong. Looking beyond these core cities to the nation as a whole, the resurgence has been slow and steady. READ MORE

SEO (search engine optimization) is a long-term strategy. There are no quick wins. There are no shortcuts. You won't see success for months, or even years. You need to be ok with that. Think about SEO like investing in the stock market. Sure, a few people get quick wins, but for most investors, they only find success after years of investment in mutual or index funds. You will only find success with SEO if you understand that you are in it for the long-haul. READ MORE

We are living in profoundly extraordinary times and in order to get the most out of it, everyone must fully and completely step aside and leave the constraining and very limiting realms of mundane and irresponsible thinking, behavior and systems, which society has created for itself. People are coming to terms with the painful truth that they have given away all sacred and inherent knowledge and wisdom for the sake of a fake and restrictive safety net that in fact does not exist. READ MORE

The act of providing accommodation to travelers has been around for a very long time. But whilst actively selling and marketing hotels and resorts have been going on for some time already, revenue management in that context started only recently. In addition to being a relatively new function in the industry, the scope of revenue management has changed and increased at an incredible speed. In the past, revenue management focused on optimizing RevPAR using the right time, with the right price, right product, for the right customer and with the right channel approach, in isolation of other functions. This is no longer sufficient today. READ MORE

Hotels are no strangers to Revenue Management (RM). They were among the first industries to embrace Revenue Management, albeit by focusing exclusively on yield management. Retailers took notice and decided they, too, should employ Revenue Management, but weren't certain how to do it since they didn't have perishable inventory like hotel rooms. Instead, retailers zeroed in on price elasticity, giving birth to price optimization. However this time it was hotels that took notice. By the early 2000s, they were swiftly adopting price optimization of room rates and again transforming their industry. While this strategy has paid handsome rewards, it's time again for hotels to emulate retailers - and even consumer goods companies - if they want to conquer the next frontier of Revenue Management. READ MORE