Business intelligence tools have evolved from useful to critical to help hospitality organisations thrive in a highly competitive marketplace. Armed with the right information, today’s decision-makers can better understand risk, performance, and the impact of decisions at property, region and group levels.

Upgrading revenue management capabilities means not only implementing the right technology solution and integrating the right data sources — ones that have been shown to improve forecast accuracy and pricing decisions — but also putting the right organisational resources in place and creating a revenue-focused culture. Following are a few recommendations for hoteliers to keep in mind. 

The demand for next-generation revenue management solutions has increased with the proliferation of online travel agencies (OTAs) with differing pricing and commission structures, shrinking booking windows, ever-more intense hotel competition in high-demand destinations and ever-increasing pressure to drive profitable growth.

As disruptors like Airbnb is transforming the entire hospitality industry with a wide range of services, not just lodging accommodations, the industry C-suite and decision makers have to move away from the traditional revenue management strategy in order to better maximising their profit.

In this day and age, it is crucial for hotel businesses to adapt to disruptive trends such as personalised customer experience, IoT, and blockchain. Advancements will also bring new challenges to the hotel finance and accounting team, who must evolve to take on new responsibilities and provide key insight for the CFO’s decisions in the following critical areas.

Advanced technologies provide hoteliers with full-scope support and benefits, from front desk to back-office operations. Cloud technology, for example, has played the key role in improving the end-to-end experience from booking to post-staying of guests, reducing cost and resource demands, increasing ROI, and hence, improving the overall business management capability of the business.

It is estimated that by 2020, the world will have more than 20.4 billion connected devices, creating one enormous intertwined network called the Internet of Things (IoT). In hospitality, IoT can be the key to achieving a complete personalised guest experience at an optimised operating cost. Embracing IoT’s endless possibilities can certainly help hoteliers create a good head start in their digital transformation journey.

Leaders are catalysts for change in organisations and managers are necessary for managing change through the rank and file workforce. Unfortunately some managers resist change, especially if they have already lived through previous change initiatives that forced them to do more with less. Managers who are unwilling to embrace change have distinct characteristics that put them "at risk" for derailing in their careers.

Nowadays, amenities such as flat-screen TV, Wi-Fi, aircon, minibar, etc. in your typical hotel rooms are considered must-haves and can no longer act as key differentiators. Hotels will certainly evolve, and the adoption of new technologies is inevitable. The question is, how drastically?

Most today’s hotel operators believe that revenue management will become even more automated with further advances in data analytics capabilities. So, which technology solution is the right one? How can a hotel operator be assured that the solution they implement will best meet the needs of the hotel and enable revenue managers to achieve optimal results? The following are just a few key buying considerations to keep in mind.