The Hazelton Hotel Places Its Trust in IDeaS’ Revenue Software and Services

The Story

When it opened its doors in 2007, The Hazelton Hotel became Toronto’s first luxury boutique hotel. Situated in the middle of the posh Yorkville neighborhood, this unique property offers 77 distinctive rooms, designed by internationally renowned firm Yabu Pushelberg, and a world-class dining and spa experience for discerning guests.

But the hotel’s relatively small back-office staff and on-site revenue manager were up against a growing challenge: the need to optimize revenues in an increasingly competitive market across a complex array of channels—all while making actionable, strategic business decisions with revenue management and forecasting data. And, they needed to reduce time spent manually managing rates and distribution.

“Being a small hotel actually makes working with manual processes more complicated,” said Michelle Carpenter-Greer, Hazelton’s director of revenue. “We have the same number of channels to manage, and the same amount of information to look at, but with a smaller team. We knew we were leaving revenue opportunities behind with this approach.”

We’ve grown to trust what the system is recommending and what IDeaS is advising us to do. Since implementing IDeaS RMS, we don’t have to waste time managing rates manually. We can use that time to make more strategic decisions. IDeaS is the right fit for our business.

Carpenter-Greer realized that a more advanced, scientific approach to revenue management was needed. She discovered the IDeaS Consulting Services team and implemented the IDeaS Revenue Mentor service. The service helps hotels accelerate their strategy by assigning an industry revenue expert to work directly with hotel staff— no matter the business objective, resource mix or skill level.

“Right from the beginning of our partnership with IDeaS, it was great to have access to someone who was an expert in the field,” said Carpenter-Greer. “Even though we are a small team working on a manual system, IDeaS showed us we had the right approach and could leverage technology to be more strategic.”

Better technology for a better revenue strategy

In working with IDeaS for more than a year, Carpenter-Greer’s staff developed a deep appreciation of the company’s expert team. The immediate positive results and growing trust in IDeaS led The Hazelton to take the relationship a step further.

The hotel is excited to have implemented their own revenue management system with IDeaS RMS. With this new technology in place, The Hazelton team now has a fully integrated analytics engine delivering results across key metrics like occupancy, RevPAR and ADR.

Plus, as Carpenter-Greer and her peers have found, IDeaS helps the business rely on a scientific and systematic approach to revenue management to help this unique business reduce manual reporting and navigate an ever-changing hotel climate.

“We’ve grown to trust what the system is recommending and what IDeaS is advising us to do,” said Carpenter-Greer. “Since implementing IDeaS RMS, we don’t have to waste time managing rates manually. We can use that time to make more strategic decisions. IDeaS is the right fit for our business.”