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Hotel OTTO Berlin recommends RateTiger for channel connectivity

Hotel OTTO, an upscale property in Berlin has recommended RateTiger Channel Manager for stable and seamless connectivity with world’s leading OTAs. The hotel, which has been using eRevMax’s award winning distribution solution, has improved its online exposure resulting in positive revenue and occupancy growth.

Centrally located, Hotel OTTO is a modern property with 46 rooms catering largely to business travellers. Since 2010, the revenue management team has been using RateTiger to update rates and availability across online sales channels. Following the suggestion from RateTiger’s Connectivity Advisor, the hotel added top OTAs from China and South East Asia in their distribution mix. This improved the hotel’s exposure in upcoming markets and brought a positive impact to their online business

“We have been using RateTiger for the last 8 years and are very satisfied with the services that totally match our needs. Thanks to the diversity of their distribution portfolio (OTA, Wholesalers etc), we can connect with bigger number of distribution partners and have experienced a steady growth in our online business.  Amongst all the products I have used in the market so far, RateTiger remains one of the most powerful and efficient,” said Mihai Cucu, Revenue & Operations Manager, Hotel OTTO.

“Providing hotels with stable connectivity have remained our priority for the last 17 years. We have developed our channel ecosystem for hotels to improve exposure and tap new markets.  We are committed to adding value to our customers, and this recommendation shows how well we deliver when it comes to best-in-class technology and premium customer service,” said Alin Lazar, VP – Sales, Europe & Americas, eRevMax.

eRevMax offers strong connections with over 350 OTAs and 70 technology providers. The company provides channel management, business intelligence and connectivity solutions to hotels, groups and serviced apartment globally.

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eRevMax completes 2-way integration with Brazilian PMS provider Check-in

eRevMax has completed integration with Brazilian hospitality software provider Check-in. Mutual hotel customers can now get the benefit of automatic distribution of availability and rate to third party online booking sites whenever they are updated and get reservations delivered from OTAs to the Check-in property management system.
The Alpha, developed by Check-in, is one the largest property management systems in Latin America and is used by over 1800 hotels. eRevMax’s distribution solutions are used by over 9000 hotels to update rate and inventory across multiple booking channels and deliver reservations into PMS. The tools also update availability across connected channels whenever a new booking is made.
“This interface compliments our continuous efforts to offer our hotel customers seamless connectivity between their technology solutions and OTAs. The Alpha PMS, with its modular, easy to use, installable and cloud modules combined with compatibility to work with different models of hotel management gives hotels scalable options. A greater number of hotels can now leverage the benefits of our Channel Ecosystem while streamlining their distribution efforts,” said Ashis Saha, SVP – Project Management, eRevMax.
“This integration will free hotels from manually capturing booking site reservation information into the property management system, resulting in a more efficient reservation process while reducing cost and effort. With this interface, we now provide a 360-degree option to our hotel customers to expand their distribution leveraging eRevMax Channel Ecosystem’s 2-way XML connectivity with OTAs, GDSs, Meta sites and Wholesalers,”  said Moisés Costa, CEO, Check-in.
eRevMax offers seamless connectivity with over 350 OTAs and 80 technology providers. The company is developing its connectivity solutions to offer sophisticated real-time revenue management functionality to the hospitality industry.
Meet the team at WTM Latin America from 3 – 5 April 2018 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. To set a meeting, contact marketing@erevmax.com

 

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Selling hotel rooms – An NIHF event

At last week’s Selling Rooms event with the Northern Ireland Hotel Federation, hotels were very interested in learning how they could control their own inventory. Most of the attendees acknowledged that through OTAs they were losing control over pricing and distribution as they fought to manage the cost of selling through third parties.

While many are trying to sell direct, it beggars the question – how much inventory is allocated to the direct channel and how much to third party, when in fact all channels should have access to the same availability. In many cases there can be as much as 24% profit difference selling direct than across OTAs.

Interestingly, hotels struggled to manage their budgets effectively as some of the revenue management or OTA costs derived from the Marketing budget and others from the Reservations. Why should the direct selling channel come from Marketing, while OTAs are paid by Reservations? Marketing will always achieve a higher profit margin and is therefore unrepresentative of the financials of e-sales.
Many consumers have a hard time booking across hotel websites, unfortunately the journey can be clunky without a clear and easy-to-use booking engines. Hotels need to invest in booking engine applications they can easily install in their website that is similar to the OTAs, this will optimize the booking journey for conversions and mobile bookings.

It was also noted the value of Voice bookings, training the reservations, call center and front of house team to offer packages based on internet rates, and upgrade if necessary to avoid losing the booking to a third party website, which will cost them dearly in commission fees.

Northern Ireland has experienced a very strong year, with most guests being domestic tourism. The national tourism office will be launching a new website at the end of the year that will incorporate direct booking initiatives from the main OTA providers, giving hotels in the region an additional option for exposure and visibility.


Ryan C Haynes is VP – Marketing Communications at eRevMax. He was one of the speakers at the event and shared his insights on how hotels can use technology smartly to distribute rooms online and make the most of direct channels as well. Ryan is based out of London and can be reached at ryanh@ratetiger.com