Revenue Management & Channel Opt

It’s said that the only time you should look back is to see how far you’ve come, and this rings true for the world of accommodation as the year gets underway. Yes, ongoing speed bumps and obstacles remain in view, but SiteMinder’s World Hotel Index makes clear how much stronger our industry is now than at this same time 12 months ago.

Employment opportunities are always a concern in most parts of the world. Corporations that need workers, employees who need jobs, and governments who want to ensure their residents have the jobs they need, as well as enough skilled workers to fill the available job vacancies in the region.

Over the years, I have experienced a great many editions of the FITUR trade fair and have some wonderful and proud memories of this event, which showcases the best of our country to the world. However, this year's is as exciting as any I can recall. With the arrival of 2022, Spanish hotels are stepping up to the plate for another transformative 12 months. The plans have been drafted, the budgets have been assigned; now is the time to put it all into practice.

Safety first. It’s a phrase we all come to know early on in our lives and which continues to inform many of the personal and professional decisions we make at every turn. Minimize risk, where possible, and do what you can to protect and enhance the safety of yourself and others. In the world of hospitality, guest and staff safety is an ever-evolving concern and consideration. In many ways, a hotel’s reputation hinges not only on its ability to provide an exceptional guest experience but to offer an environment that proactively advocates for the safety and wellbeing of all those on property.

When people imagine the implementation of robotics in real-world scenarios, a range of attitudes begins to permeate the dialogue. As with any cutting-edge advance, uncertainty is one of the most common reactions. Since the scope of automation, artificial intelligence, and robotics is ever-evolving and enters so many cultural, community, and commercial spaces, it is automatically one of the most challenging areas of emerging technology to address accurately. As automation propels innovation into human spaces and gains more prominence in our everyday lives, inquiries on intent, necessity, and impact lead the conversation. Are robots here to help? Are they here to replace humans? What can a robot do for me? In the hospitality space, these questions remain the same.

In our last blog, Preparing Your Data for the Cookieless World, we shared tips on what data you should collect, how you can collect it, and how to get it into a database. In this blog, we’ll look at how to activate data in a cookieless world. The key is activating with a full-funnel, multichannel approach.

We’ve all had enough to do the past couple years, so I thought I’d offer some tips to help take a few things off our plates for 2022. While we have reasons to be optimistic in the third year of the pandemic—most of us are burnt out from dealing with market volatility, demand surges, staffing shortages and a satisfaction crisis—and we do need to be prepared for more of the same. The good news is we already have many of the skills and strategies that we need in place.

While 2021 will go down in hospitality history as one of the most challenging years ever faced, it will also be remembered for the exceptional resilience, solidarity and strength shown by the people who make our industry so special, both leaders and workers alike.

The pandemic, Brexit and ongoing supply issues have prompted key changes in the UK’s hotel sector, many of which are long-term, if not permanent.

For a long time, hotels’ have been reluctant to offer upsells – in particular early check-ins and late check out. And for good reason. The operational logistics and associated risk involved was too great; they outweighed any perceived benefit. But times have changed – not only in terms of Covid and low occupancy, but in terms of technology. With automation, hotels can actually guarantee availability. This not only provides hotels with a real tangible way to increase revenue – something all hotels want right now, but also results in more satisfied guests.