After many years of avoiding the issue, it looks like this year hotels are at last waking up to just how much of their business comes via the web, even if a booking is not made directly online, it is said that 55% of customers still use the internet to research or check out the facility online before ringing to book.
However, even though a hotel would never dream of employing Reservations Staff who could not talk on the telephone or use a fax machine, they have continued to employ them without the skills to communicate with customers over the web. Are they paying these people 45% of they salary, because they cannot communicate with the other 55% that come via the web? We somehow doubt it.
This year we have had many hotels comes to us looking for guidance, at long last recognising the fact that they need to have specialist skills in house. First attempts have been hesitant, with the job being passed off to marketing personnel, or the’owners young daughter’, or anyone 'who can work a computer', hotels do not seem to have grasped that this should be an integral part of their Reservations Staff daily jobs.
Some hotels have even tried to subcontract out the job of Revenue Manager (would you subcontract out the job of answering the hotel telephone), and occasionally we have been asked to sit in on interviews. It is true that it can be surprising who makes a good Revenue Manager, but we would suggest that you avoid Marketing People (havent they got something better to do?) and IT Specialists (who only want to look at new software), and surprise surprise!!, look at your Reservations Staff. Revenue Management might be a fancy new term, but there is a good chance that Managers and Hotel Reservations Staff HAVE BEEN PRACTISING REVENUE MANAGEMENT FOR YEARS, just not online!
As part of our service we do spend a lot of time working with new hotel Revenue Managers to bring them up to speed, but we have seen the good work fall apart once the Revenue Manager is left alone in the hotel. One hotel recently managed to reach a turnover of 100,000€ Per month online just 3 months after they made one of there reservation staff Revenue Manager. Unfortunately it fell apart after the training because the hotel management were not able to maintain a consistent pricing structure, or were reluctant to see the Revenue Manager working at a computer when so many customers were waiting to check out. That will be a Million Euro mistake.
At the other end of the scale some 'high tech' hotels believe they have found a solution to the Revenue Management/Online Marketing Problem; They purchase a PMS System WITH A WEB MODULE, and praise be.....'Commission free bookings'.
Now from this point on we are not of course neutral in what we say, but nevertheless we will give you our thoughts on the issue. Initially we saw such systems as a threat to our business (as a supplier of Hotel Booking Engines) but as time went by we realized that taking a booking online is only part of the process, in fact an awful lot of work needs to be undertaken on the Online Marketing side to get traffic to the website BEFORE bookings can be taken; Google Adwords Campaigns, E Mail Schemes. Search Engine Ranking, Content Updating etc etc. So if a hotel DOES opt to purchase (Note the word PURCHASE, they are NOT free) a PMS system with a web module, they still then have to go and find someone to undertake Online Marketing on an ongoing basis, ie No money is saved, but what they have lost is the link between effort and reward, because many companies such as ourselves earn their shillings when a booking is made, ie they live from commission, and so usually are motivated to do what is necessary to sell rooms online.
One PMS supplier told us that they had implemented a web module from their system as early as 6 years ago, but struggled to prove the value because the website was not well optimized to generate traffic. Common sense might also suggest that PMS systems are good at Reservations Systems, and Booking Engine Suppliers are good at Booking Engines, and both should stick to their respective knitting.
In our own case we hope to be some way towards solving this dilemma because we ARE now integrated with several PMS systems, the most recent one being the Hotsoft PMS System. However it is worth mentioning that integration can come at many different levels. We for example extract room availability from a PMS System, recalculate the rates (depending on availability) and 'push' this inventory into other Booking Engines using our Channel Management Solution such as Booking.com etc. (In the next version Jan 09 we will also be taking the bookings back into the PMS automatically).
This reduces a Revenue Managers workload, but doesn’t remove it completely. It should for example do away with most of the dull booking engine management, and hopefully this will save time to put into other areas of Online Marketing, such as Social Media or Google Adwords.
Either way, Revenue Management should be a priority for all modern hotels, and integrated into their Reservations Staff daily work routines.
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