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BW Belgium Achieves 5% Revenue Growth in 2012

  • Paris, France, 6 February 2013

Hospitality Solutions improves position for 55 properties utilizing RateTiger

Hospitality Solutions reports 5% growth in revenue for Best Western Belgium with a slight increase in direct online sales for the regional property portfolio.

Michael Thiry, President of Hospitality Solutions, that provides strategic revenue management and distribution support to Best Western Belgium member hotels, successfully increased total revenue by 5% in 2012, regardless of the difficult trading conditions across Belgium. The competitive marketplace forced Hospitality Solutions to closely monitor the sources of reservations and the true value OTAs delivered to over 55 properties.

This was achieved 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. Hospitality Solutions subscribed to RTSuite for 25 properties that offered a quality standard and a simple to use system for hotels to manage and update availability and prevent overbookings.

The Hospitality Solutions team noticed that the OTA share of bookings increased only by a small margin of 1.24%.

“Our hotels manage anywhere between 5 and 15 channels, we need to control what is sold and when and at what price – this prevents overbooking, but also to ensure we maximize our direct channel bookings as much as possible. 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, Hospitality Solutions

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.

Michael Thiry expects to see ongoing increases in direct bookings in 2013 through better treatment of rate and inventory distribution. 2013 will present its own challenges as Michael aims to achieve over 55.49% of revenue from Direct Online Bookings and reduce OTAs share to less than 28.91%.

“The strategy is ‘slowly but surely’ as we begin to cut waste and focus on the channels that really produce room nights and deliver the exposure the business needs to achieve the revenue targets. There is much more at stake now therefore we need to fine tune the entire distribution process and utilize the channels to build the value of the brand and direct sales."

We sought to drive bookings to the Best Western direct channels to outperform the OTAs, 2012 truly marked the first time that direct channel bookings were ahead of OTAs. Now we have achieved this, we need to make the process better and more streamlined for all properties so they can control their availability at the right time, while maximizing their profits.

My aim for all my client properties is to become independent with their revenue strategies and have full control over the sales process. We utilize tools that streamline these efforts and ensure any member of staff has the confidence to make the necessary adjustments to their distribution and availability."

said Michael Thiry

Hospitality Solutions uses a mix of technology and strategy to react quickly and more efficiently to changes in the local marketplace. The utilization of comprehensive room rate data delivers the intelligence to see market position. The hotel strategy consultancy is able to help hotels reduce cost through a group wide Revenue Management approach with a centralised buying power.

Distribution Mix

DIRECT: 53.49%
OTAs: 30.91%
OTHERS: 15.60% (Direct, Conference, Corporate…)

Key Stats

  • Manage 250 accounts
  • 10 sales websites
  • Monitor 160 Belgium hotels
  • 2 – 3 rate changes per day per property

    • About Hospitality Solutions:

    Hospitality Solutions is a consulting company, with over 20 years experience in hospitality management, who can help consult in various fields in order to obtain the desired goal. Key specialist areas include Yield & Revenue Management & Consulting, Training in Management and Staff, Distribution & Marketing and E-Consulting & Community Management.

    About eRevMax:

    eRevMax provides next generation online distribution & business intelligence solutions to the hospitality industry. The company’s new offering – LIVE, a responsive web platform, incorporates the RateTiger and Connect products, thus offering detailed competitor intelligence, comprehensive business performance analytics and reliable channel management capability through secure XML connections. Incorporated in 2001, eRevMax helps over 20,000 hoteliers worldwide to increase revenue, streamline business processes and reduce booking acquisition cost.

    For more details, please visit http://www.erevmax.com/ or contact us on marketing@erevmax.com.

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    Customer Speaks

    "Yield managers are becoming increasingly important to maintain our place in the market but also to ensure our resellers have accurate information. More of our wholesalers are requiring us to manage rates online. Through RTChannelmanager Pro this process has saved valuable time. We have introduced more dynamic promotions and can now give attention to social media campaigns,” -

    Isabelle Descombes,

    Electronic Distribution Manager, Chateau Versailles, Canada.

    “Implementing a channel management system was essential and has proved to be money well spent! We have achieved better market transparency while simultaneously saving time. Additionally, we could boost different roomtype category sales to further increase our revenue. The result is a significant growth in turnover alongside a saving on process costs!” -

    Markus Barth,

    Regional Director & Hotel Director, RAMADA Überseehotel Bremen, Germany

    “We generate almost 18 % of our bookings through the internet. RateTiger helps a lot, we save time updating our rates and allotments, which help us reach our sales targets. We are able to manage products by length of stay applying the relevant rates across 9 websites – so it is incredibly practical,” -

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