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Spanish hotel major – H10 selects eRevMax to optimize online sales potential

H10 Hotels, one of the largest hotel groups in Spain, has selected eRevMax to increase their online business and distribution exposure. “RateTiger has really helped us to save time and respond to market dynamics. It is faster than any other channel manager when it comes to updating rates.” said Meri Ferrando, Sales Manager, H10 Urquinaona Plaza.


Real time connectivity is directly impacting on H10’s sales, maximising take up on last minute availability to enhance profits from this operational area. Two new properties of H10 Group, Urquinaona Plaza and Port Vell hotels have been using RateTiger Channel Manager to centrally manage rates and availability in real-time across all connected channels. The properties are also utilizing the eRevMax Channel Eco-system, which offers two-way seamless connectivity with global OTAs to reach out to new markets.

Read the full story here.

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Increase online revenue – The Ola Hotels’ way

Spanish hotel group Ola Hotels has increased its online hotel revenue with the help of an automated rate & inventory management solution from eRevMax. The revenue management team of Ola Hotels is using RateTiger’s hotel Channel Manager to sell rooms from an allocated inventory pool from each of the properties across multiple channels simultaneously.

Commenting on this partnership Aleix Alcover, eCommerce Manager, Ola Hotels said “We have introduced a new pricing structure and are updating our rates in real-time across 8 online sales channels. In the last two months since we have started using RateTiger, our online revenue has been steadily growing. Thanks to real time competitor benchmarking reports, we can respond to market dynamics in real-time”. All reservations made on these online travel sites are captured, and available inventory is automatically redistributed for the hotels to sell last-room availability thus eliminating the chance of overbooking.
Read the full story here.
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BW Belgium Achieves 5% Revenue Growth in 2012

Hospitality Solutions has reported 5% growth in revenue for Best Western Belgium with a slight increase in direct online sales for the regional property portfolio. The Group which is using RTSuite in its 25 properties has achieved this growth by using RateTiger channel manager and pricing reports, to improve benchmarking and visibility of prices and packages across third party sales channels (OTAs), while systematically improving operational efficiencies for the revenue management team.

“By implementing a quality standard in strategy and technology we can homogenize the sales environment for hotels to make it easier for all staff members to understand. RateTiger, for example, will allow any member of staff to simply Close-Out the hotel across all sales channels should it become fully-booked. This control ensures we maintain good relationships with OTAs.” said Michael Thiry, Distribution Manager.
The key strategy for Hospitality Solutions was to draw reservations from OTAs towards the direct brand website of the member property. In 2012 OTAs achieved a minimum revenue increase of just 1.02%, compared to the 5% increase in overall revenue performance. 
    Full story on 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