According to Hospitality Technology’s “2016 Lodging Technology Study,” 62% of surveyed hoteliers use business intelligence (BI) tools and another 16% will add them within 18 months. 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. But how exactly can hotels achieve competitive advantages with business intelligence?

It is safe to say most businesses would resort to cost cutting initiatives in a time of tight margins and high risks. However, a research by McKinsey shows that only 26% of those cost-reduction programs, still yield effective results after four years. CFOs, therefore, are increasingly turning to zero-based budgeting, ZBB, as a more sustainable approach to cost reduction.  

Electronic invoicing (e-invoicing) is the transmission, reception, and processing of digital transactional documents between suppliers and buyers. A true e-invoicing method should be entirely electronic in such a way that data from the supplier can be integrated directly into the buyer’s system. E-invoicing benefits both suppliers and buyers. 

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 for the hospitality industry 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 a 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.

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?