It is no secret that Business Intelligence has been at the forefront of Hospitality Reporting for the last few years. More and more businesses rely on Big Data to optimize their Hotels and Food & Beverage Outlets.
Never has data and analytics been more readily available to Directors and Managers as it is today. In the past Business Intelligence came with a cost that was only affordable to bigger Hotels and Hotel Chains, now that the technology has reached a point where it is available to any size property, it is important that we understand and use this data correctly to increase revenues, lower costs and optimize performances. In this article we analyse 5 points that can help you do just that.
Optimizing Room Rates & Occupancy
The Pricing Strategy for Rooms is probably one of the most important parts of your overall sales strategy. Pricing your rooms too low will cut in to your revenue and margins while pricing your rooms too high will lower your occupancy. But these are just the simple and most obvious influencers of your Pricing Strategy. Pricing should be dynamic and according to current trends and competition and should be clever to attract visitors with attractive packages and incentivise repeat and long stay clients. Hotel Business Intelligence can give you all the data you need to make the right decision when pricing your Rooms and Packages. By comparing historic data with upcoming trends and applying additional filters and verticals Business Intelligence can give you a very accurate picture of what has worked in the past and what can work for the upcoming trends.
Focusing Sales & Marketing Regions
Investing into Marketing and Sales Actions can be a difficult task. There are too many different markets, regions, niches and just as many travel events and marketing opportunities making it difficult to know where to invest your budget. It is therefore vital to understand where those funds should go and in hindsight see if those investments where sound. Hotel Business Intelligence can show you historic and current regional trends. Matching regional information with information generated from Tour Operators and other Partners can show you which regions and partners currently produce good Room Nights and ADR’s. This can help you plan targeted marketing trips, improve ADR and focus sales efforts on certain regions and partners.
Spa & Leisure Analysis
It is no secret that Hotel & Resort Spas are difficult to manage, they require a Sales and Service orientated management approach that balances Service and Revenue perfectly to avoid losses and generate profits. This stands especially true in a Luxury Resort environment where operating costs can be very high. A good Business Intelligence tool will provide utilization and cost analysis for Therapists to ensure you are making the most out of your available sellable hours and will help you roster staff accordingly. Further more BI will help identify the most and least profitable treatments matching treatment cost with treatment revenue helping you optimize the Spa Treatment Menu.
Groups & Events Forecasting
Groups and Events is a big niche for many Resorts and Hotels with facilities that can accommodate such groups. The Sales & Marketing process for G&E is usually very different from the main Hotel but still must coincide as they usually draw from the same pool of Rooms and public spaces. Hotel Business Intelligence can make it a lot easier to forecast bookings and allocations helping the rest of the hotel management to plan accordingly. The BI should also give insight in to the current G&E Sales efforts providing Realtime pipelines for the Sales Director along with a revenue breakdown and cost analysis of past and upcoming groups.
Conclusion
Hospitality Business Intelligence plays a vital role in analysing and optimizing most aspects of the operation without sacrificing many management hours into building reports using data fragments from various sources. A strong Business Intelligence platform will connect to multiple data sources such as PMS, POS, Stock Control System and event hotel accounting systems and will combine and present data and KPI’s that will help the direction and management of the Hotel our Outlet. A BI tool should also be flexible in creating new Analytics as trends and needs arise. The five points in our article are only a fraction of how a BI System can help you optimize and improve your Hotels. Contact us today for an introduction and see how Mastel Business Intelligence can help your Operation.
