The Ritz London Remains at the Forefront of London’s Competitive Marketplace with Pricing and Market Optimisation

The Story

The Ritz London is a truly iconic establishment. Founded by the Swiss hotelier César Ritz, the hotel opened in 1906, and since then has maintained a truly global reputation for luxurious excellence.

However, The Ritz London is actually a relatively small hotel by the standards of many of its direct competitors in London’s luxury hotel market, the vast majority of which have the significant advantage of being part of larger organisations. These competitor hotels are able to benefit from London-wide, or even international, centralised market intelligence. By comparison, The Ritz London is a privately-owned and operated hotel, with only 136 rooms, therefore, the London landmark is always innovating in order to maintain its position at the forefront of the world’s best hotels.

After utilising the IDeaS Revenue Management System (RMS) with great success for a number of years, The Ritz London turned again to IDeaS for the next step in their continual process of growth and innovation. The hotel decided to commission IDeaS to implement the IDeaS Pricing Navigator service for the hotel. IDeaS Pricing Navigator is an engagement led by an IDeaS advisor who utilises market intelligence, IDeaS proprietary analytics, and industry expertise to help build the hotel’s optimal pricing structure and strategy.

Ruth Jones, Executive Assistant Manager, Marketing & Development at The Ritz London, explained, “We wanted a ‘health-check’, to see if our current rate strategy aligned with revenue management best practices. We were looking to see if our current tactics were optimal, or whether we needed to revise them, and, if so, how we should.”

Supporting strategies with analytics

In order to conduct the analysis, The Ritz London’s historical revenue data was gathered and IDeaS utilised proprietary methods to analyze the hotel’s demand patterns and price sensitivity by business segment, room type, and demand period. IDeaS then recommended a new rate structure that would increase overall revenue by focusing on the rate ranges with the strongest demand. Predictive modeling of the new optimal rate structure was generated which estimated revenue impact of deploying the new rate structure.

These recommendations and predictions were delivered to The Ritz London in the form of intuitive and actionable visual dashboards, enabling the hotel team to take immediate action on tactics and strategy into the future. Ruth stated, “We were very impressed by the process of the project overall, and all the support that we received.”

“The results from the Pricing Navigator engagement supported our strategies and revealed new insights into price sensitivity of our room types. As the findings were backed by IDeaS’ powerful analytics, it convinced us we were on the right track and could proceed with confidence,” said Ruth.

Designing a personalized rate spectrum

Armed with a new pricing strategy, the hotel is optimistic about the potential results. “Once our optimised rate strategy is put in place, we are projected to increase our overall annual revenue by 2% according to the analysis conducted,” asserted Ruth. “Accordingly, we will be able to achieve a complete return on our investment shortly after employing our new rate strategy,” she added.

Ruth concluded, “As a privately owned and operated hotel, we really depend on quality vendors to assist us in maintaining our position as a prime hotel in London. We have an on-going relationship with IDeaS that is based on using their reliable solutions which always yield results – utilising the IDeaS Pricing Navigator service was a logical progression for us. And, just as we hoped, the results of the analysis have enhanced our overall revenue management approach, and look set to significantly optimise our performance.”