May 2015, London
Opportunities, tips and lessons in RM success from a Spanish hotel brand
With revenue management and distribution becoming increasingly interdependent, we hear where NH Hotels is focusing its energy today
Ahead of the Travel Distribution Summit, Europe on May 6-7 speaker Fernando Vives, SVP Commercial Strategy & Pricing, NH Hotel Group, shares his insights from the past year year and into what lies ahead.
Biggest opportunities for investment
If we refer to ‘investment’ as something beyond monetary resources, we see great opportunities for programmatic media buying, metasearch and social media. Complementary to all this, and as important if not more important, will be customer relationship management.
When it comes to technology investment, we have prioritised investments in off-page and on-page analytics systems and multidisciplinary tools that will allow us to integrate and orchestrate on real time marketing, pricing and revenue decisions and initiatives.
A recent investment in intelligent dynamic banners is already showing a positive return on investment.
Biggest lesson of the past year
Understanding customer acquisition. Oh, and looking beyond the last click. Also by having a better knowledge of the path to conversion will allow you to optimise and make decisions in a smarter way.
To outsource or not?
There are several factors to take in consideration here namely: strategic value, investment or resources needed, time to market. Depending on what your priorities are will help you decide whether to outsource or keep it in house. Lately, you may find you start with an external provider and then bring it in house, or vice-versa.
Impact of metasearch (and Google) on commercial strategy
Recent developments and convergence means that the boundaries are blurring, but if we refer to ‘traditional’ metasearch, this channel is a key point in the path to conversion. The key is to understand both contribution and attribution of this channel.
If we speak about Google HPA (Hotel Price Ads) we can say it is a powerful tool, has a great potential and we are exploring this as an option. However, it will also depend on how Google plans to evolve it. Needless to say, we have heard different versions of future next steps.
4 top tips for hotel pricing specialists
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Work on segmentation: Segmentation is becoming increasingly important. Establishing a concrete pricing strategy per segment is key to boosting revenues and optimising RevPAR in order to avoid cannibalism while reaching different types of consumers. Think in terms of total revenue, not just room revenue.
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Develop a one to pricing strategy: Apply specific pricing based on customer behaviour and of course align technology and strategy.
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Move from big data to information: With rapidly growing sources of data that help us make better decisions, it’s important to invest in the right revenue and business intelligence technology. It will pay off and help you to speed up and improve the pricing decision making process.
- Invest in people: They will make all the difference to executing a successful Revenue Management culture.