It is a question I often hear when explaining what we do at Xotels. People seem surprised hotels are willing to hand over a vital part of their strategies to a 3rd party. Such a sensitive and key part to the success of your business as revenue management should not be left to an ‘outside’ company many hoteliers respond.

A new year and many changes are on the horizon that are impacting heavily your hotels pricing and distribution strategies. It looks like 2013 will be quite an interesting year from a revenue management perspective. We have put a list of some important focus points on paper to get you started.

We have just recently taken on 2 youth hostels in Paris and are working on developing revenue management strategies for them. Just as in hotels yield management techniques can be implemented in youth hostels to maximize revenue and profit. Another exciting journey we are taking with Xotels.

It would be interesting to compile a list with the tools that a revenue manager should have his disposal. Let’s call it the ultimate Hotel Revenue Management Toolkit. We have done some digging through our excel reports, yield tools, systems and technology and came up with quite an extensive list of tools and gadgets a revenue managers requires to do his job well.

Investing in hotel real-estate requires a lot of funds. We are talking about tens or hundreds of millions of dollars/euros. You need to ensure a proper ROI is generated with such a strategic investment. Moreover hotels are a multi-million dollar operation. In any other industry we would be looking for a well experienced CEO to manage such a company. Who would you trust to manage your hotel investment?