5 Tips for Optimizing Revenue Management Meetings

5 Tips for Optimizing Revenue Management Meetingsl

The professionals in charge of Revenue Management have long since ceased to be the hotel’s “freaks”.

Other colleagues know or should know what they are doing and how important their role in marketing the hotel is.

Whether you are launching a Revenue strategy from scratch or looking to improve the strategy you have been working with for years, having a discipline and fluid interaction between the different actors involved in the hotel project will be key and essential. Below you will find 5 tips that we recommend when preparing a meeting on Revenue Management:

1. Who should be present at the meeting?

Planning the meetings and being able to count on the hotel’s managers to gather information and implement new actions will be the starting point. At this point we can make a possible organizational chart for a specific Revenue Management meeting and what the main functions of these roles would be within the meeting:

• General Manager**.** Supports and promotes a culture of revenue generation and capture within the team.

• Reservation Manager. Discusses and advises on the inventory and price management of a short and medium term term.

• Revenue Manager.  Responsible for revenue management in the different commercial actions.

• Director of Sales and Marketing. Discusses and advises within the sales process in relation to general market conditions.

• Conferencing Manager. Provides information on group status and inventory management.

• Front Office Manager. Advises on customer satisfaction levels and tactics to increase current sales in force. Proposes loyalty initiatives as an added value in recruitment.

• Marketing Manager. Provides information on marketing actions focused on target markets or sub-markets.

• Online Manager – Manager Online. Asesora en la reputación a través de la plataforma, la paridad y el canal de disponibilidad online.

2. How often should meetings be held?

Meetings should be held at least once a week and for an average of 60 minutes. As a more detailed analysis, and in order to go deeper into different aspects, it would be convenient to hold a somewhat longer monthly meeting of 90 minutes. The structure of the meeting would consist of an analysis of the issues addressed in previous meetings of 20-25 minutes duration. This would leave 35-40 minutes for a new scan and to analyze possible measures to be implemented in the future. At the end of the meeting, it is advisable to have a document where the decisions taken officially by the different parties involved have been noted.

3. What information is important to use in the meeting?

Productivity will be increased by keeping these meetings at the highest strategic level. You will most likely only have those 60 minutes to gather all the staff in one room. Therefore, we must refrain from going into subjects that may require more time.

The most important data under discussion:

• On the Books.
• Booking Pace for hotel type.
• Booking Pace for special events.
• Arrivals and departures.
• Forecasting for 30, 60 y 90 days.
• Competitor data.
• Online reputation metrics.

Revenue Management managers with their automated strategy will have easy access to information and a greater ability to react to hotel pricing measures.

4. What are key issues to be addressed during meetings?

It begins with the overview and then highlights the fiscal year data and key budget variations.

You can go into many more details, like for example:

• Rhythm and collection in the current and following months
• Demand by segments
• The key changes of the last seven days
• Identification of critical dates
• Reservation roof, how many rooms are assigned to the sales team?

5. What will make a conventional meeting successful?

Successful revenue meetings have a logical flow as much of the data from t
he other departments will be decisive in the future planning of the pricing strategy. The meetings should bring together those responsible for each of the hotel’s departments, especially those related to management, marketing and marketing. This way, when a new strategy is established, everyone will know what they have to do and what measures to take.

Once the meeting has taken place, the objective will be to synthesize the information obtained and translate it into visible improvements in the pricing strategy. The success of Revenue Management depends on continuous improvement and constant optimisation of the hotel’s strategic actions.