To help align you and your property for success, let’s break this up into three categories:
- People
- Processes
- Technology
“I want a revenue management system (RMS) for my hotel, but am I or is my property really ready for one?”
In my seven years of adventures with IDeaS, I’ve come to realize a few key factors to help hoteliers and their properties be more successful with an RMS before investing.
People
Think about your organization’s change-management culture. What’s its commitment to change? When you have an RMS, your hotel will run differently than before. But how ready are your colleagues to accept this change? Some will likely be eager for an RMS and become your “early adopters.”
Unfortunately, others probably won’t embrace the change of an RMS and will be your “resistors.” Finally, there will be what I believe is likely the majority of your colleagues, which is your “wait-and-see crowd.” Do yourself a favor and consider which people at your hotel will be in each category and what approach you will take to effectively manage these different personas.
Processes
What revenue management (RM) standards, practices and SOPs exist at your hotel today? How are you collecting data, analyzing data, forecasting, pricing, managing inventory, distributing rates, evaluating groups, etc.? Who is handling this?
If you don’t already have documented RM processes in your manual environment, you should develop some basic RM standards. Why? Because one of the many benefits of having an RMS is automation. It is not as effective to add an RMS, which continuously manages these various areas on a daily basis, when nothing is currently in place or it is being done differently depending on who handles it.
Technology
Believe it or not, technology is the easiest part of this as it plays a supportive role for your people and processes. It frees hotels from being spreadsheet dependent. An RMS becomes the single source of truth as opposed to multiple versions of the truth which exist throughout your property.
Technology removes the emotion from revenue management. Analytically-derived, science-based pricing decisions are made from what an RMS knows will happen verses what someone feels or thinks might happen. Automated, user-directed reporting becomes accessible across your organization and eliminates all the time previously spent creating manual reports.
Some of the most successful clients using an RMS today took a step back and considered the system readiness of their hotel(s) before fully investing in RMS technology.
I would strongly encourage you to do the same because there is a lot more to successfully using an RMS than just buying one. Maybe you need to incorporate some RM processes and standards development training? Or, perhaps an RM concepts workshop?
Having a successful RMS experience is all about organizational alignment around your technology investment. If the time is now to elevate your revenue possibilities, I would encourage you to do your homework and consider finding the right balance of people, processes and technology within your organization to help achieve overall revenue success for your hotel.
- Overcoming Those Overbooking Fears - May 1, 2019
- The Secrets of RMS Readiness Success - August 8, 2018
- Industry Insights with Penn State’s Hospitality Services’ Emily Bowen - May 10, 2018
