IDeaS Empowers Pivot Hotels and Resorts to Confidently Manage Revenue in Competitive Markets

The Story

When we think of boutique, luxury, and lifestyle brand hotels, we often focus on the unique personality of each property. But underneath the polish, luxury and lifestyle-brand hotels are fighting for attention in a world where a finite number of guests have seemingly unlimited lodging and booking options. At the same time, brand loyalty and travel budgets seem to be dwindling.

Pivot Hotels and Resorts, a division of Davidson Hotels & Resorts, is tackling this challenge head-on with objectives that include leveraging the latest technology and being agile enough to move at the speed of a modern business. Pivot has eight luxury properties across the United States, with its sights set on opening five to seven new properties every year. To accomplish its goals, the Pivot team looked to technology that could help them create cohesion among sales, marketing, and revenue management teams. This was especially important for their marketing efforts, which are crafted locally for each hotel and not driven by a chain brand.

“Small and independent hotels need a significant marketing game to get in front of guests and gain their attention,” said Patricia Davis, Pivot Hotel Group’s vice president of sales, marketing and revenue management.

Better analytics drive better revenue

The company started using a cloud-based, revenue management software package from IDeaS Revenue Solutions when the company launched. Since then, Pivot has rolled out the software to more properties as the company expands into new markets or reflags existing properties.

The initial goal of the software was to give revenue managers a tool to help with demand forecasting, as well as to create optimal pricing scenarios for any given room, at any specific date or time. They liked that IDeaS was able to tap into a greater range of data by leveraging advanced features like prescriptive analytics for forecasting. This feature allows hotels to go beyond conventional, hotel-forecasting practices to understand optimal outcomes and the strategic decisions needed to achieve them.

“There’s a lot of agility in the platform, and you can get a lot of reporting from it,” Davis said. “It’s critical to our business that we have access to information easily and IDeaS fits us in this way. Our hotels have a high number of room types, in locations where room type really matters. We stand to gain a lot, using IDeaS, to understand how our rooms are being sold or bought and used by our customers.”

Pivot Hotels & Resorts’ properties are often located in high-traffic locations, with high occupancies and few shoulder days. According to Davis, however, her teams rely on the advanced analytics in IDeaS’ revenue management tools to smooth out peaks and valleys in demand.

Instilling confidence

Pivot is also winning the booking battle by publishing consistent rates across a growing number of booking channels. Combined with digital marketing initiatives, Pivot’s objective is to drive the most traffic to its lowest-cost booking channels: brand.com websites. Central to this strategy is also the resulting trust that guests have when researching rates at Pivot properties.

“IDeaS is very helpful in getting the best pricing decisions from point A to point B with its rate publishing tool,” said Davis. “Trust is part of our brand, and our customers can trust what they see on our website will be the same rate they see on Expedia or Booking.com.”

As part of its vision to support “performance from a new perspective,” Pivot recognizes the importance of creating a rock-solid company culture built on trust and collaboration. With the ease-of-use and advanced SAS® analytics, Davis feels IDeaS’ solutions provide the tools necessary to create strategic thinkers who can help others within the organization achieve success.

Technology, Davis believes, is behind this seismic shift and is helping build a revenue management culture throughout the Pivot organization. With the support of the IDeaS team and the power of the software, Pivot knows it has found a winning combination. “I tell them to trust the decisions from IDeaS’ tools, and you’ll have a great outcome in the end,” she said.