International Youth Convention Hotel See Exponential Growth Due in Part to IDeaS Unique Consulting Services

The Story

The International Youth Convention Hotel was designed by British Deconstructionist architect, Zaha Hadid, the brain behind the new Beijing Daxing International Airport and Galaxy SOHO. The hotel is affiliated with Hexi Group Youth Olympic City and is managed by Nanjing Jinsail Hotels & Resorts. Located beside the Yangtze River, International Youth Convention Hotel has nearly 1000 high-quality comfortable guest rooms and five multi-functional banquet halls, each with an area of more than 1,000 square meters, and over 60 business conference rooms with more than 20,000 square meters.

Education First

In the past, the hotel staff lacked basic revenue management (RM) knowledge and practices. For example, revenue-related KPI wasn’t well established, job responsibilities of the revenue manager weren’t clearly defined, the hotel lacked revenue-related standard operating procedures and the hotel was missing fundamental RM training. Additionally, there were no regular revenue meetings, daily forecasts, or a standard decision-making process. There was also a lack of strategic business mix analysis and guidance, price positioning among its comp set, and the pricing structure was not clear.

It was clear that the hotel needed more than a revenue management solution. To better incorporate a solution, the Hotel General Manager knew that in addition to a world-class RMS, his team would need the insights and training that only the IDeaS consulting team could provide.

World-Class Training and Mentoring Services

After five years of comparing costs and services, the hotel leadership team selected IDeaS not only because of its reputation as the world’s most trusted RMS, but for its Consulting group and its Organizational Transformation and Mentor Service to help his staff level up their revenue management skills.

“The IDeaS brand is the world’s most trusted revenue management software, and because of this, it was the main reason we chose IDeaS. But the key component in our selection was the unique consulting organizational transformation service the company provides, followed by a mentor solution combined with deep industry expertise to help us maximize revenue and profit potential.”

The hotel leadership team understood the benefit of automation, but also the need to establish a solid revenue culture in the organization through in-person guidance. To better understand their challenges and opportunities, they turned to IDeaS to help them design a roadmap and prioritize action plans. They also implemented customized training and education, put standards in place for internal processes and procedures, and utilized day-to-day performance monitoring and strategy review.

The IDeaS team was very professional, but especially the consulting team. They played a key role as teachers, mentors, coaches, and strategists throughout the entire service. We achieved top-ranking KPI increase in the entire city of Nanjing during a difficult COVID environment. Revenue increased during the past 12 months by 8.64 million RMB!

Automated Revenue Management Coupled with Onsite Mentoring

Revenue Management is important during industry peak season, and it becomes even more beneficial for hoteliers during challenging or difficult periods. The recent downturn provided a perfect window for organizational transformation, both during and after.

During the pandemic, leisure hotels/resorts were the first to recover, leaving the big MICE convention hotels behind because the meeting group segment was the last to bounce back. However, with a proper revenue management strategy, such hotels can also achieve great results through an organizational transformation during and after the pandemic.

A well-established automation solution is a key element for organizational transformation, but more importantly, a hand-in-hand, in-person consultative approach plays a more important role in such transformation. The consulting team leads stakeholders in their awareness of the changes, a better understanding of the situation, and the confirmation of the change and transformation vision statement.

Unprecedented ROI During Covid

IDeaS consulting team provided the essential steps to help the hotel team accomplish great success during difficult times. The hotel team was able to design and implement a roadmap, align objectives, prioritize action plans, attend tailored educational and coaching sessions, adopt an automatic system solution, and accomplish daily/weekly/monthly performance-focused strategy reviews all with the help of IDeaS.

Working with IDeaS, the hotel has experienced an unprecedented KPI increase, a revenue increase of more than $8million RMB, a well established revenue culture, and a complete organizational transformation.