Over the last few years we have gotten more and more involved in the businesses of our hotel clients. We have seen a clear difference in revenue and profitability in hotels where we got involved at project definition stage vs coming in at pre-opening. There are many key points that increase the revenue potential of a hotel or resort, which architects, designers and investors are overlooking. And we are not talking about pocket change. I estimate the upside by utilizing revenue management insights to be easily 10% to 25% in top line income. Just think about how much this would impact your bottom line profit.

Total Revenue Management is a much-discussed concept in hospitality, but in reality it has produced a great deal of confusion. Put simply, it is the revenue management of all revenue sources in a hotel. From your RevPAR and GOPPAR to the hotel restaurant, and from the bar, spa and gym to activities and excursions, it encompasses every single hotel income stream.

Let's dive in and see how this can be done ...

The rooms of your hotel are one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal as a revenue manager. It allows you to segment and position the hotel product, differentiating yourself from the competition. If segmented correctly it also allows you to build a revenue management strategy based on a comprehensive demand based yield or rate grid. 

Following the global outpoor on International Women’s day last March 8 (2019), hoteliers around the world should take some time to look into a very important market segment, the solo female traveler. Tapping into and capitalizing on new and growing niches such as solo and experience-focused travel has become a major asset for hotel manager, but also to open up new revenue streams. “Female-friendly” is one such niche, which is now experiencing considerable growth in the hospitality industry.

Adapt and evolve: forget about practice

In his book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell popularized what became known as the 10,000-hour rule, by documenting the lives of successful people such as Bill Gates, Mozart and the Beatles. "Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness", he wrote, inspired by the work of Daniel Levitin, the neurologist who scientifically proved that "10,000 hours of practice are required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert in anything".

The theory is fascinating, though, not always reliable, especially in our field of hotel revenue management and distribution, where adjectives such as disruptive are frequently (over)used and success is measured more on innovation rather than consolidation. A defining factor here is the ability to adapt and evolve!

Some of you might have noticed that the topics of our blog posts have been gradually changing over the last few years. From a pure revenue management focus we have strayed into areas of operations and finance. And even a few on concept and design. You might think we have fallen of course. But all to the contrary, we are exactly on the path we set-out when we launched Xotels back in 2006 ...