to have the right price point for the brand keeping in mind its position within the hotel chain to maintain the identity .
Over time we have seen the migration from the term yield management to become revenue management , the role & the scope of the field has evolved with the way technology is revolutionizing the hospitality space . New revenue and digital tools are popping up and it is time to take a step towards artificial intelligence to manage pricing and total revenue management .
What is the biggest lesson you have learned coming out of the pandemic ?
The biggest lesson that hotels have learned is not to rely on just one market or a handful of source markets . With the various travel restrictions coming into effect every other week , successful hotels were constantly on the lookout for new opportunities . It ' s key for hotels to have a healthy mix of nationalities in their business mix .
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Hotels have learned their lesson the hard way , those who have not optimized distribution faced challenges when only certain markets opened up , and not having the right partners made them scramble to connect with operators who then took advantage of the situation and demanded extremely good deals to get the hotels listed . However to be listed with all the various agents is a long painstaking process of offline rates distribution , getting featured on the various brochures and connecting to their extranets takes time . Travelers to the Indian Ocean still prefer a brick-andmortar shop to book their holidays as the source market is Russia , CIS , and Europe , which contributes to 80 % of their business mix .
When it comes to the various OTA ’ s , getting the hotel profile built , mapping rates plans , and getting the distribution set up via direct connect option is still limited to a handful of tech companies . The success of online travel agencies is largely attributable to their marriage to leading-edge technology and a keen insight into consumer behavior patterns .
Hotels that didn ’ t invest in digital marketing also lost out , with hotels going aggressive in their campaigns on various digital and social platforms .
What does the future look like as luxury hotels start to recover ?
Luxury will never go out of fashion as humans crave to get pampered as it makes them feel good , it ’ s psychological . Personalized service is key to luxury travel , as humans , we need to connect with another person , and that why call volumes have not dropped in various call centers around the globe and at the property level . Global call centers with multilingual agents are still relevant in today ’ s business environment .
Luxury resorts especially in exotic locations such as Maldives , Seychelles , Mauritius , Hawaii , Bora Bora , Bali are not just selling rooms because these hotels build a strong experience-driven reputation . These destinations are successful as they have great food and beverage concepts along with recreational , wellness , adventure , and leisure space to cater to high-end clients hence it is a great opportunity to focus on non-room revenue streams and be able to innovate with industry partners while working internally to invest in processes , people and systems .
Hotel chains should take a very long-term approach and start embracing technology a lot more than before and a direct , faster , and personalized contact with the guest must be a conscious effort to harp on the guest experience and radical profit share as today ' s consumers rely less upon traditional travel agents and more on web-based research when booking travel .
There is also a need to balance short-term revenue maximization with long-term customer development to help driving change in how the RM function collaborates with other functional units , including operations and marketing . For instance , hotel chains have started to find new and innovative ideas to grow the business and market share by not having a direct sales team onsite rather than being deployed in key business markets to drive business and generate sales as per destination and clientele requirements .
Focus on building more intelligence around each customer segment and applying knowledge to those segments while also promoting online guest feedback reviews help the revenue management professionals to drive up rates as they know they have the backing of the operations team to support yielding over peak periods which then translates into better RevPar / TRevPar .