Selling on a one rate structure (RACK for everyone) can certainly apply if demand is largely above the supply (Olympic Games, WorldCup..). However during Citywide / Exhibition events, establishing the right market mix is a much easier task that many think.
What are the main key indicators to look at?
- Demand pattern last year,
- Demand pattern this year,
- Groups last year?
- Public bank holidays,
- School holidays,
- Ramadan period,
- Citywide events (Arab Health, Gulf Food, Air Show, Green Energy Summit...),
We recommend you to establish an excel spreadsheet with a specific legends, and distribute it across all sales department. Additionally, update this data in your PMS, so that all your associates are aware of it, and make sure that those dates are integrated to your analytical on the books / forecast reports.
Case Study: Arab Health Exhibition, Dubai
Arab Health is the largest medical health care exhibition & congress in the Middle East. It is held at the Dubai World Trade Center. It is currently the 38th edition.
How much would you expect to increase your RevPAR during Arab Health 2012 (Jan 23-26, 2012) vs. Arab Health 2011? +5% / +10%/+20%
In order to make sure your performance is at the optimum, you need to understand the event numbers and flow of business travelers:
- Over 3000 exhibitors from around 60 countries exhibit their medical and healthcare products,
- 65,000 healthcare professionals,
- Nearly 30 country pavilions and Germany is the largest exhibitor group,
- 17 CME (continuing medical education)-accredited conferences and over 500 internationally acclaimed speakers,
- Regional industry worth 80 billion dollar per year,
How many rooms does Dubai hotel establishments feature?
- Nearly 74,000 (DTCM Statistics)
So the city has high chance to be sold out. Sounds great, right? so as a Revenue Leader, how does this translate for your strategies?
You see lots of information is easy to get. The market segmentation mix, RevPAR last year, groups in house last year can be retrieved from your PMS or your historical data spreadsheet. Knowing your historical data, and compiling into analytical trends is the way forward for the revenue manager to make sounds decisions in the hotel.
Revenue Manager will then decide on its pricing strategies, inventory restrictions for the hotel during that period and communicate to the Sales department. If the hotel has banqueting facilities, it is also important not to let them empty while the hotel is running at full occupancy.
Information such as no shows, cancellations, non refundable booking, early departure need to be worked out 8-12 months before, during the sales contracting in order to have a positive revenue impact.
Cheers,
Romain Saada - RSVP Hospitality
Hi there, awesome site. I thought the topics you posted on were very interesting. I tried to add your RSS to my feed reader and it a few. take a look at it, hopefully I can add you and follow.
ReplyDeleteGroup revenue management