IDeaS Empowers AMERON and Althoff Hotels with Unrivaled Revenue Automation, Speed to Market and Rate Optimization

The Story

The four-star AMERON Hotels, a business brand of Althoff Hotels, has properties in Germany and Switzerland and caters to business and leisure travelers alike with their range of metropolitan, boutique and resort properties.

Angelika Viebahn is director of revenue & distribution at AMERON Hotels and has been familiar with IDeaS Revenue Solutions since 1999 through her previous employer. When she started working for AMERON, she found the manual revenue management process to be constricting, time-consuming and unsustainable.

Viebahn knew full well the benefits IDeaS Revenue Management System (RMS) could provide for an individually managed hotel chain like AMERON, and she sought out IDeaS to provide more accurate accounting behavior, precise forecasts, and automated decisions for self-assured pricing and higher profitability in a constantly changing market.

More time for strategy

Starting with the AMERON Cologne Hotel Regent as a pilot hotel, Viebahn and her team, together with IDeaS’ client relationship managers, successively implemented IDeaS RMS. The smooth integration quickly prompted installations at several other AMERON Hotels.

“IDeaS RMS helps us tremendously in day-today business by automatically generating a report which provides a detailed breakdown of the monthly pick-ups for each hotel per day in terms of room nights, ADR, occupancy and RevPAR,” said Viebahn. “IDeaS’ rate decisions are automatically sent to all connected channels including our PMS. This eliminates the need for manual maintenance and gives us more time to make important strategic decisions.”

The fast and promising results with AMERON soon caught the attention of the revenue management team at the Althoff Collection, AMERON’s parent company, and convinced them to select IDeaS as the exclusive revenue management solution provider for their portfolio.

Today, a total of 11 properties, each with an average of between 120 and 200 rooms, are equipped with IDeaS RMS, and all future AMERON and Althoff hotels will be optimized from the ground up with IDeaS’ advanced algorithms to make daily revenue operations more productive and profitable.

A supreme position for pricing

Along with IDeaS RMS, Viebahn also utilizes the IDeaS’ Group Evaluation tool, which uses the details of a potential group booking to generate an analysis that calculates the best date of arrival and best fare that will bring the hotel the most value. With IDeaS’ rate shopper integration, the revenue managers also have access to current competitor prices. This full-circle view of the market gives Althoff and AMERON Hotels a supreme position in pricing. Where other hotel managers may sell too low a rate too quickly, Althoff and AMERON revenue managers trust IDeaS even when the system advises them to yield and sell at a room at a higher price.

“IDeaS RMS provides us with up-to-date evaluations and detailed forecasts—a very different speed-to-market than other hotels would be able to achieve,” said Viebahn. “By updating the room rates in the PMS four times a day, IDeaS is able to respond much faster to changing circumstances and get us out on the market sooner with updated prices. A manual process could never be this fast and accurate in the long run. IDeaS does it for us 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days into the future.”

This major change initiative, led by Angelika Viebahn, for AMERON and Althoff has now been rolled out at all levels of the two hotel groups. IDeaS has helped establish a sustainable revenue management culture in the properties that streamlines performance and forecasting, giving managers valuable time to strategically improve their business and provide their guests with the best possible experience.

By updating the room rates in the PMS four times a day, IDeaS is able to respond much faster to changing circumstances and get us out on the market sooner with updated prices. A manual process could never be this fast and accurate in the long run. IDeaS does it for us 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days into the future.