Is your hotel distribution optimised? See how much your bottom line could be improved

Part One

A two-part article taking a look at the wholesale/bedbank distribution environment to see where improvements can be made or opportunities are being lost that impact profitability. We’ve produced a calculator to identify the potential. Part two takes a closer look at real-world calculations that give practical insights into the savings that can be achieved.

Hotel distribution is a complex business with an intricate web of connections linking hotel room suppliers to hotel distributors which includes bed banks, wholesalers, switches, online travel companies, metasearch engines as well as the GDSs. Even in the battle for direct sales hoteliers need a number of different third party channels in order to reach their target audiences across the globe.

Selling travel is very competitive and relies on having an extremely robust and reliable infrastructure and deep inventory insights. To accommodate these distribution needs, tools such as robust booking systems or external API connectivity are absolutely necessary. Look to book” and server loads are important issues. So if you distribute hotel rooms do you know how well your systems are performing? Are you missing opportunities to sell inventory? Are you even aware of those potential losses to your bottom line?

Try our Calculator

To help you answer this, we’ve introduced a quick return on investment (RoI) calculator to identify the annual financial potential of some simple operational fine-tuning. To see in seconds what the financial benefit of some simple adjustments might be for your organisation, just complete the three step process:

1. Add your own booking numbers

2. Add your improvement objective

3. Press Calculate to see financial benefits

 

 

We’ve created the calculator to provide an indication of the power of using a performance monitoring and search and booking analytics tool to get better operational results. The calculator gives an immediate insight into potential benefits based on your real-life assessments and the numbers can be tweaked up or down to reflect real-life scenario and savings aspirations. If search and booking analytics are currently not part of your operational toolkit, we hope these numbers persuade you that you are missing a trick that many leading intermediaries are already using.

One of our experts has written this article with some real life example calculations that gives some concrete and practical insights into the kind of hidden savings to be found when monitoring and managing performance with analytics.

Parting Thoughts

Intelligent insight can deliver extraordinary value by providing the necessary information to make strategic and tactical decisions in three major areas:

1. Revenue, pricing, and profitability
2. Customer satisfaction, retention, and acquisition
3. Operational efficiency and excellence.

So as your organisation builds a business case for increased use of intelligence – 3 things are worth bearing in mind:

• The savings potential calculated offers a framework for identifying areas to consider and questions to ask. However, each company’s pains and opportunities will be different; let the business context dictate your ROI model.
• Business intelligence is an enabler, not a panacea. However, it does allow an organisation to leverage its own data with greater sophistication and precision. Organizations can better understand and manage the business by unearthing root causes and monitoring actions and results.
• Do not underestimate the “soft” benefits. Many companies find that the increased accessibility and visibility to operational and distribution information enables employees t in other areas involved in sales and revenue management to gain valuable insights for business improvements and increased innovation.

And if you’d like to receive a more detailed savings analysis or to find out more about how Trio can be used shine a light on your distribution potential please please get in touch.

Click to Calculate