You don’t lead an industry by standing still.
Innovation and change go hand-in-hand in an organization built on technology. We know our clients operate in a highly competitive industry, and they must embrace change and adapt to make the incremental revenue improvements needed for success.
New customer needs, market opportunities and expanding analytics capabilities have all been key drivers for IDeaS as we strive to help properties of all sizes and capabilities maximize their revenue potential.
While an established culture of innovation helps keep us all busy in our daily pursuit of bringing our clients the latest-and-greatest features and product offerings, it’s also important to take a moment to look back at what we’ve accomplished recently.
IDeaS Innovations: A Look Back
Over the years we have rolled out changes big and small to our product lineup. While the list below by no means covers every effort to iterate and improve our offerings (fixing minor bugs is important, after all) it does provide an excellent overview of what we’ve been cooking up.
Independent & Linked Products: A one-size-fits-all approach to dynamic room pricing optimization is far from ideal. Historically, the ability to dynamically price only one daily rate challenges hoteliers to manage numerous rates that stem from the best available rate or are priced independently, such as weekly or monthly rates. This requires a careful balance of the right daily rate to account for the linked rates, and that can lead to lost revenue opportunities.
The Independent Products feature enables G3 RMS to optimize multiple base rates (like daily and extended stay rates) independently of each other. This means hoteliers with multiple distinct product lines can price and optimize in real time without needing to navigate a cumbersome set of rules and manual rate adjustments.
Linked Products is another helpful feature for hoteliers looking to capture incremental revenue and streamline their pricing process. As you know, it’s a common practice to offer discounted rates for military veterans, local guests, advance purchasers, loyalty members and more. Often those discounts are a simple static percentage or dollar amount that’s directly tied to your best flexible rate.
With Linked Products, you can offer dynamic pricing and automatically flex the discounts based on criteria like season, days to arrival, day of week, and room type. This reduces unnecessary discounting on your peak days and ensures you’re offering your most attractive rates during slow days—all without manual intervention.
See our blog, “Independent Products Pricing Is Here (And Why You Should Embrace the Change)” for more information.
G3 Automated Configuration: The initial configuration of a revenue management system (RMS) can be a tall order. If not executed well, this process can significantly impact your bottom line. That’s a big reason why we took the initiative to help automate the process as much as possible with this feature. That means less time ramping up and more time reaping the benefits of G3 RMS.
“We implemented 17 hotels and the automated configuration process has been fantastic. This has been our fastest rollout—the amount of time and effort saved is mind-blowing,” says Christian Boerger, Vice President of Revenue Strategy for Oxford Collection.
Learn more about G3 Automated Configuration in our blog, “New automated configuration feature for G3 RMS decreases time (and effort) to value.”
G3 RMS Channel Forecasting Dashboard: To understand the full picture of your property’s profitability, revenue managers and their colleagues need to be able to dive deeper into the performance of their guest acquisition channels. The G3 RMS Channel Forecasting Dashboard provides hospitality organizations with the ability to monitor and manage channel performance and costs. This helps you better understand the profitability of both direct and indirect business and report on and forecast net channel KPIs.
See our press release for additional information.
G3 On-demand Optimization: Market conditions can change quickly, and when you’re in the business of predictive analytics you don’t want to be caught flat footed. With on-demand optimization, G3 RMS automatically captures the latest data available, recalculates and provides proactive recommendations to account for sudden changes—whether that’s a large group cancellation or the local sports team hosting a playoff game.
See our blog, “What Do Summer & Sailboats Have in Common with Revenue Management?” for insights into the value of nimble optimization.
IDeaS Optix: Born out of an established need to simplify the process of reporting on multiple properties, IDeaS Optix is a powerful revenue intelligence tool designed to fit the needs of hoteliers. Instead of relying on a Frankenstein-mix of spreadsheets, data warehouses, and data visualization tools, Optix is built on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and serves as a one-step centralized tool for revenue leaders. This innovation makes it easier to spend less time gathering and preparing reports, and more time exploring the data and adjusting strategies.
Learn more with our blog, “Introducing IDeaS Optix: Big-Picture, Multi-Property Revenue Intelligence.”
G3 RMS Benefit Measurement Dashboard: There’s a ton of variables (believe us, we know) that influence the revenue performance of a hotel. With so many factors in play, it can be challenging for financial decision makers to get a true sense of the ROI an RMS provides. For instance, was that last tough quarter a true case of underperformance? Or did you make the most out of an unexpectedly down market?
The G3 RMS Benefit Measurement Dashboard helps provide a clearer picture by using sophisticated machine learning algorithms to neutralize the effects of external factors. This gives you a reliable way to review estimated gains in occupancy, ADR, RevPAR, and room revenue from G3 RMS implementation.
Check out our blog, “Calculating the True ROI of Your RMS Just Got Automated” for more.
G3 RMS Profit Optimization: For many properties, the total profitability of a guest’s stay can’t be summed up while solely focusing on room revenue. Ancillary revenue from food and beverage, on-site services and more can all have an impact on profitability, and factors like margins and acquisition costs need to be taken into account.
Profit Optimization is an option for the G3 RMS revenue science engine that enables it to capture the most valuable business while considering the total contribution for each guest. This allows hoteliers to evaluate total revenues, profit margins for each revenue stream, and the costs associated with acquiring and servicing guest stays in real time, while determining highly sought metrics such as profit per available room (ProPAR).
See our blog, “What Would You Do with More Money?” for more on the value of this holistic approach.
IDeaS RevPlan: Financial leaders know the importance of budgeting and forecasting revenue. They also know how time-consuming and painful the process of and preparing this information can be, particularly when considering the total revenue performance of a property and not just rooms.
RevPlan helps financial leadership quickly gain a better understanding of the performance of a property’s revenue streams (food and beverage, rooms, meetings and events, and other income). This means you can spend less time gathering and preparing data from various departments and more time focused on identifying profit-boosting strategic changes.
“RevPlan has become a vital tool for our revenue team, saving us time each month which used to be spent creating and managing forecast spreadsheets,” says Monica Xuereb, Chief Commercial Officer, Loews Hotels & Co. “With the success we have had with RevPlan’s rooms forecasting, the team is confident the food and beverage forecasting module is the next step in taking us toward a scientific total revenue forecast.”
For more, check out our blog “Introducing IDeaS RevPlan – Science-Based Total Revenue Forecasting”.
Innovation is our specialty
Becoming a trusted partner for over 22,000 properties worldwide doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Like with any strong relationship, we strive to listen, understand your business challenges, and craft thoughtful solutions that ensure your needs (and nice-to-haves) are fulfilled.
Could your property benefit from the backing of a trusted innovator in revenue management? Start by checking out our Hospitality Revenue Management Solutions Buyer’s Guide.