delegate intensity? Hotels create their own internal KPIs but as there is no standard, benchmarking is difficult. Without recognised KPIs, how do we know if we are successful?”
REVENUE MANAGEMENT FOR MICE: A HUGE OPPORTUNITY FOR HOTELS
While revenue management for MICE is gen- erally a very manual process today, things are improving, with SmartSpace from IDeaS one of the products making a difference. It’s a system from which Thwaites, a grow- ing collection of hotels, pubs and inns, has benefited. Like most hotels, the group, which has an average of 100 guest rooms at each of its properties as well as modern function spaces for meetings and events, had found managing its function space through the ebbs and flows of conference business demand challenging. While the revenue management staff wanted to align function space and guest- room revenue strategies, they lacked the same level of insight into function space demand that they had with guest rooms. “We collected function space data on a spreadsheet, but never really used it to make decisions because it required so much mainte- nance,” says group revenue manager Katharine Hurved. “The team spent more time entering the data than actually doing anything with it.” Since investing in SmartSpace, they’ve been able to better evaluate pricing and inventory for event inquiries – and they were able to maxi- mise the impact of meetings and events across the organisation, including rooms business. The group has reported up to a 25% uplift on guest rooms, by leveraging SmartSpace to align
16 | Technology Prospectus 2020
“Good, strategic, data-driven revenue management around meeting space offers a huge opportunity
for hotels” Debra Adams, HOSPA
meetings and events and rooms strategy. Mean- while, in some hotels, they have seen a far more effective use of space by leveraging the demand data to improve booking selection. For Adams, this makes sense. “Good, strate- gic, data-driven revenue management around meeting space offers a huge opportunity for hotels,” she says. “In the same way that reve- nue management techniques and processes have driven profits in room sales, there is no reason why implementing similar strategies will not improve performance in meeting space sales. This is still a relatively unexplored area for hotels, and as demand for more sophisti- cated tools grows, tech companies will react.”
TOTAL REVENUE MANAGEMENT HOSPA expects to see revenue management activities refocus on Total Revenue Manage- ment (TRM), which is a holistic view of all the assets in the hospitality space, not just hotel bedrooms.
With increasing focus on gross operating profit per available room (goppar), revenue managers are using technology to enable the integration of the selling of all the facilities available,” says Adams.
In order to develop a wider range of ancillary revenue, many creative ideas have emerged to maximise the use of space by focusing on the periods of low demand during the year, month, week or even during the day. For example, some airport hotels have started pro- viding a space for showering and refreshing on an hourly basis for travellers who are mid- way through their travels. Meanwhile, other properties are teaming up
with companies like WorkSpott and AndCo that transform under-utilised spaces into drop-in workspaces for freelancers and other remote professionals. In France, Accor has taken this to the next
level. Following its 2017 purchase of 50% of the French co-working operator NextDoor, which has since been rebranded as Wojo, it has opened 150 Wojo-Spots in lobbies, bars and restaurants in economy, mid-scale and luxury hotels across the country, with 750 more to come in the next two years. Philipp Laqué, managing director of
Revenue Management Solutions (RMS), also believes there is plenty of scope for operators to get to know their walk-in dining customers better. “Hotels truly understand their customer profiles and how to optimise not only the in- room experience but the overall experience of a stay on-site, from dining opportunities to spa packages,” he says. “However, they’re playing
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