London, UK - 12 October 2011
British hotel chain implements channel manager to improve room rate performance and bookings
Brook Hotels has further developed its revenue management operations to improve advanced bookings while increasing revenue across its 12 key locations.
The British hotel chain with 21 historic properties has introduced channel management technology within its Sales and Marketing department to gain greater control over future bookings. Brook Hotels has seen an increase in advanced bookings, particularly with the upcoming national events in 2012, Diamond Jubilee and London Olympics, and is seeking to further benefit from OTA exposure.
"It's imperative now that we engage in more future planning across our sales channels," said Amit Ummat, Sales and Marketing Manager, Brook Hotels. "We are seeing that room rates need to be much more flexible for future dates as our guests look at booking further ahead."
Brook Hotels chose RateTiger's RTSuite RTChannelmanager to meet the increasing demands of selling online to multiple travel agents. Implemented two months ago, RateTiger has already significantly reduced the time managing rates and ensuring they are accurate across all channels.
The hotel group manages both large booking portals like booking.com and laterooms.com as well as local tourist boards and extranets with the prospect to add more sites in the coming months. This additional sales exposure has also lead to increased direct bookings to the website while keeping each property high in the search rankings.
"It affects our bottom line if the properties are not listed accurately with the right price. With greater online demand our prices need to change in accordance, we have many local event rates so we understand the nature of flexible rates but the challenge we've had is getting them physically loaded."
Brook Hotels is processing multiple updates across an average of 10 websites per property saving significant time each day. The team can now focus more on rate strategy to optimize bookings.
"RTSuite RTChannelmanager has already proved a very effective tool. It's helped us place rates for the Olympics that are relevant to the market. When manually managing channels it's easy to make mistakes; now even if we load an error we can quickly make a change and send it live. We've also managed to set Min/Max rate values through RateTiger to prevent major rate errors. We definitely have greater rate management and prices are more relevant now."
"If our hotel has an uncompetitive rate it effects our ranking significantly. If our rates are out of sync with the market we don't receive the bookings." As a result Brook Hotels now has greater choice of which sales channels to work with, as workload can be managed easily, and ensures that all channels are managed effectively.
"We are more proactive now than ever and have more competitive rates out everywhere." Brook Hotels will be monitoring the success of its new procedures and finding ways to gain further exposure and increase direct sales.
RateTiger is the longest serving dedicated channel management solution on the market, having launched in September 2001. The full service rate shopping and channel management solution offers bespoke and premium products for hotels of all sizes, with connectivity to over 750 sales channels.
About RateTiger:
RateTiger is a premium rate shopping and channel management solutions provider, a thought leader in online sales and revenue management. RateTiger's Product Suite, security certified under ISO 27001:2005, empowers and enables the travel and hospitality industry to compare rates with competitors on a real-time basis and update a wide variety of distribution channels and travel portals easily and efficiently with the largest online channel management network (750+) and XML connections (150+) available.
For more information please visit http://www.ratetiger.com.
For further information, please contact:
Ryan Haynes
VP - Marketing, RateTiger
Tel: +44 (0) 7825 66 15 75
Email: ryanh@ratetiger.com
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