Accurate hotel forecasts take a lot of work to create. One day the industry celebrates sky-high returns (1) while other markets struggle to prevent occupancy from slipping beyond their control (2). Travel has always been a global industry, but more than ever, hoteliers find their properties impacted by international trends, which are increasingly challenging to predict. Amid these factors, the current pace of change in hospitality calls for faster, more frequent shifts in operating strategy.
Seizing the Summer Surge
Keeping up with trends and evolving your strategies to maximize revenue will require an agile approach and flexibility to spare. These drivers are all culminating amid the industry’s preparation for what is likely the most active summer travel season in four years. According to data from Expedia’s summer travel forecast, flight searches are up 25 percent overall for June through August compared to last year, with international destinations commanding interest in the triple digits.
A busy summer is a boon for any hotel’s bottom line as long as they prepare for the demand operationally and strategically. Capitalizing on hospitality’s booming months will require access to a large and growing volume of traveler data, which must be presented in a manner that is actional and understandable for hotel owners.
The key to success today is strong data visualization. But what does that mean, and why does it matter for your hotel?
A Better View
Modern revenue management is defined by speed. Hotels are great at gathering information, but many struggle to act on their findings quickly enough to benefit. While forecasts are growing more accurate, revenue managers often need to be equipped with an inability to properly slice and dice their data in a way that allows for complicated analysis of different properties, locations, or segments. Advanced revenue management tools are available to help assist data scientists by quickly providing the data sets they need in record time.
Even more important to the equation is when revenue managers cannot provide context for their findings, organizations can suffer from option paralysis. To avoid this, hotels need access to digestible and often visual data. Without access to these capabilities, too many organizations are overwhelmed by irrelevant information and false positives, slowing their reaction speed and, often, missing out on impactful trends.
Suppose revenue managers could access practical data visualization tools built directly into the hotel’s revenue management system. In that case, they could navigate large data sets and deliver their findings to hotel leadership. The key is to unite departments behind the scenes and adopt a tech stack capable of sharing key data points for aggregation. Establishing this has been a priority for operators across the industry since the pandemic drove increased reliance on technology. However, strides still must be made to ensure hotels become skilled at analyzing their data. Operators who have done so are finally seeing the power of speed and how it creates new efficiencies across departments.
Seeing is Believing
Access to accurate, current, and actionable data allows each hotel department to maximize efficiency while driving higher revenue per guest. For example, revenue management data can help marketers measure how their efforts impact booking pace to refine future campaigns. Or sales can use the data to understand the granular performance of an agency or company account to inform contract negotiations.
When actionable data and clear trends support each department, hotels can begin to maximize the value of their total square footage at a time when travel is in full swing. Doing so requires a properly formed tech stack, modern data visualization tools, and cooperation from hotel leaders. All of this and more is possible through advanced data visualization, which is then used to improve reaction times and decision-making.
Operators attempting to compete with hotels equipped with these capabilities will likely burn out when they could be focusing on day-to-day operations and relying on their data to decide what comes next. Once operators see their data laid out in a way they understand, it will turn them into believers.
Success today is often determined by speed, but operating at the pace required to maintain a competitive edge demands more than skill and will. Technology is here to provide groundbreaking data visualization capabilities that enable hotel operators to react in ways that were once considered impossible.Â
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Revfine.com is a knowledge platform for the hospitality & travel industry. Professionals use our insights, strategies and actionable tips to get inspired, optimise revenue, innovate processes and improve customer experience. You can find all hotel & hospitality tips in the categories Revenue Management, Marketing & Distribution, Hotel Operations, Staffing & Career, Technology and Software.This article is written by our Expert Partner IDeaS
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(1) Hotel Prices Are Up a Whopping 54% Right Now. Here’s Why
(2) Hotels: Occupancy Rate Down 7.4% Year-over-year
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