Effective hotel revenue management is about much more than simply “putting heads in beds.” Seasoned hotel revenue managers understand that growing profits is not a product of increasing occupancy levels alone. Rather, it’s the result of selling the right room to the right person at the right price. Improving your hotel’s bottom line may require using multiple rate levels, switching up your market segment mix, responding to RFPs more quickly, or relying on hotel revenue management software for assistance.
In this post, we review a variety of hotel revenue management software options fit to accommodate hotels of all shapes and sizes. We break down what hotel revenue management is, the downside of failing to responsibly manage revenue, and the tools that can help hotels manage revenue more successfully. From owners and operators to sales directors and general managers, Cvent offers hotel revenue management software designed to help all hospitality professionals uncover and capture more business.
Discover how hotel revenue management software is changing the game
What is hotel revenue management?
Hotel revenue management is the culmination of various processes and procedures that revenue managers undertake to predict customer behavior, manage hotel inventory, and set room rates accordingly. Using historical and demand data, market insights, forecasting reports, and careful analysis, hotel revenue managers identify booking patterns, demand trends, changes in market conditions, and other influencing factors. They use this information to set optimal hotel room rates in accordance with the patterns they identify.
What happens if a hotel does not manage revenue effectively?
Failing to appropriately manage a hotel’s revenue stream can negatively affect the property in a variety of ways. Inefficient revenue management could lead to improperly loaded hotel inventory, a lack of rate parity on third-party sites, RevPAR losses, and can potentially drive travelers to your competitors.
A common mistake new revenue managers make is focusing too much on increasing hotel occupancy. They may lower room rates, offer a large number of promotional codes, or sell large blocks of discounted room rates to drive demand. While these occupancy strategies may lead to a hotel sellout, they could end up costing the hotel a significant amount of revenue overall. Sacrificing revenue for occupancy may result in the property underperforming compared to the competition or missing out on profit opportunities. On the other hand, increasing room rates to increase hotel ADR or RevPAR alone could drive travelers to nearby competitors offering lower rates.
Hotel revenue managers strive to drive rates without sacrificing occupancy, and vice versa. Effective hotel revenue management tackles rate, occupancy, demand, inventory, profits, and availability—all at the same time.
How does hotel revenue management software help?
Hotel revenue management software can maximize operational efficiency, prevent manual entry errors, optimize hotel revenue, grow profit margins, uncover trends, and so much more. Choosing the right hotel revenue management software for your property can make the entire process more efficient while simultaneously maximizing revenue and profitability opportunities.
Integrated and intuitive hotel revenue management software uses rate level and room type optimization to sell the right room at the right price to the right guest at the right time. Hoteliers, general managers, sales directors, and revenue managers can all use hotel revenue management software to optimize rate management efforts, build successful pricing strategies, and maximize their ability to yield top-line revenue.
Does Cvent offer hotel revenue management software?
Cvent offers a library of hotel revenue management software systems and services to accommodate hotels of all shapes, sizes, and service levels. Across hotel brands, small properties that offer select and limited-service utilize Cvent’s Sales & Catering CRM, an easy-to-use customer relationship management software. The Sales & Catering CRM helps hoteliers manage RFPs, capture groups, book events, manage tasks, manage business, track, and analyze business data.
In addition to providing a complete CRM system for smaller properties, Cvent also offers a variety of hotel revenue management software systems and tools that larger properties, chain hotels, destination resorts, and other venues can use to optimize their revenue management strategies. Below, we explore numerous tools, resources, and hotel revenue management software systems hotels can utilize to drive more revenue:
1. Track and analyze performance data
Cvent’s suite of Business Intelligence tools uses historical data, future forecasting, market reporting, and real-time RFP data to provide hotel professionals with valuable performance metrics and business insights. Hoteliers, sales directors, and revenue managers look to Cvent Supplier Network’s (CSN) Business Intelligence tools to better understand their competitive set, assess hotel performance, track shifts in demand, and identify growth opportunities.
Business Intelligence tools can help hotels find the answer to a variety of performance questions, such as:
• Are you getting your fair share of market demand?
• Has demand in your market shifted?
• Are your room rates in line with competing hotels?
• Are you missing out on opportunities to raise rates?
• Are you on track to overperform or underperform?
CSN Business Intelligence tools empower hotels with the ability to track how well they are performing compared to previous years, as well as how well they are performing against the competition. With access to past and forward-looking data, hotels can use Business Intelligence to make better decisions on a number of important aspects of your business, including revenue management.
2. Automate rate loading and publishing
Take advantage of automated hotel revenue management software to optimize the tedious process of loading rates. CSN hotels have access to a variety of rate management tools that import, upload, audit, and publish hotel room rates.
• Eliminating the need for the time-consuming and error-prone process of manual rate entry, Cvent Rate Manager imports and reviews hotel rate plans to save time, avoid mistakes, and boost efficiency.
• Cvent’s Rate Publisher works with your hotel’s revenue management software to automate the rate loading and publishing process, providing revenue managers the flexibility to load rates as they see fit.
• Revenue managers can trust that room rates are reflected accurately on internal hotel systems as well as on all the major GDSs using Cvent’s Rate Audit software.
• Cvent’s Rate Availability service automatically audits all available rates to ensure that negotiated hotel rates are accurately loaded and available for booking. Reduce the risk of upsetting valuable corporate clients by failing to assign hotel inventory to negotiated accounts.
Automating a portion of the hotel’s rate loading and management task allows the revenue management team to spend less time manually entering hotel rates and more time uncovering new revenue opportunities.
3. Streamline the RFP response process
In addition to automating the rate loading process, automated RFP response services streamline the RFP response process and help hotels manage their leads more effectively. Revenue managers rely on Cvent’s suite of RFP Productivity tools to:
• Track, organize, and display all hotel RFPs
• Rank leads using Lead Scoring software
• Automatically turn down bad business
• Gain insights on comp set RFP performance
• Track RFP market demand
• Analyze business won, lost, and turned down
• Speed up the proposal process
Design and submit customized, high-quality, and mobile-friendly proposals using Cvent’s Smart Custom Proposals software. Using the information you provide, branded templates, and stunning layouts, Smart Custom Proposals reflect the best on-site experience your hotel has to offer. Set customization and automation parameters based on your hotel’s unique needs, goals, and RFP strategy that tell the system how much of the proposal process it should automate.
Partially automating RFP responses using pre-populated proposal answers allows the bidder to add content to personalize the bid. Hotels can also rely on RFP Automation software to review RFPs, identify their profitability, and send proposals accordingly in the event your team isn’t able to look them over themselves. RFP management is revenue management—it’s not just about sleeping room rates or occupancy levels. It’s also about revenue from group business, like that brought in with effectively managed RFPs.
4. Drive more group revenue
Many group travel planners scan various hotels in their desired location before selecting which hotels will receive their RFPs. To reduce the risk of receiving proposals from hotels that are a poor fit for the group, a planner may quickly scan search results for “hotels in Phoenix” to help identify potential accommodations.
Hotel revenue management software designed to target group planners, Cvent White Label streamlines RFP workflow from your hotel’s branded website to a centralized lead portal. Upon visiting your website, planners who like what they see can submit an RFP directly from the branded webpage, eliminating the need to find your property within their RFP management system.
With the aid of Cvent White Label, interested planners can submit a group RFP directly from your hotel’s branded website. The hotel revenue management software employed within White Label also empowers hotel revenue managers with:
• The power to manage all inbound eRFPs in a single system
• RFP tracking and reporting services
• Built-in messaging services
• A mobile-friendly interface that appeals to planners on-the-go
Sales directors and hotel revenue managers can also uncover new group business opportunities using Planner Navigator, a tool that allows hotels to proactively find planners sourcing all across the CSN. Cvent Planner Navigator provides powerful insights into past bookings, previously submitted RPFs, and more.
Furthermore, Cvent also offers Passkey, valuable hotel revenue management software used to drive more group revenue and make room block management more efficient. Cvent Passkey eliminates the need for tedious rooming list management, data entry, and reduces the risk that group block members book at the wrong hotel. Passkey’s revolutionary software appeals to planners who prefer to take room block management into their own hands and control the accuracy of their group reservations.
Learn how Passkey can help your hotel
5. Uncover new revenue opportunities in your backyard
Hotels can also use Cvent’s hotel revenue management software to identify and bid on smaller accounts not managed at the chain level. Through Cvent Local Accounts, hotel sales directors can easily create bids for local accounts and send high-quality proposals quickly, making it easier for participating hotels to uncover and win business the competition doesn’t even know about.
Also aiding in account management, Local Account services allow sales and revenue managers to track all of the rates created by the hotel in a single easy-to-access place.
6. Win more corporate business
Hotels turn to Cvent’s library of powerful transient marketing tools and intuitive software systems to grow their transient business segment. Through data collection, market reporting, hotel revenue management software, and publishing tools, Cvent Transient helps hotels win and manage more corporate business.
Hotel sales directors, revenue managers, and general managers use Cvent Transient to:
• Win more corporate accounts
• Beat the competition
• Increase corporate revenue
• Uncover business opportunities
• Reach sales and hotel production goals
• Optimize transient business management
• Drive occupancy and rate while minimizing risk
To help hoteliers capture the attention of more planners, and win more corporate business, Cvent works to put hotels in front of the right travel buyers at the right time. In addition to advertising your property to the thousands of travel planners and buyers who source through Cvent each year, Cvent Transient helps hotels uncover local business opportunities through Proximity Reports and Market Leads.
• Proximity Reports help hotels gain an advantage over their local competitors by providing resources that assist in uncovering and targeting local businesses.
• Market Lead services help hotels connect with travel managers and planners who are actively sourcing in the area. Through Cvent’s Market Leads tool, hotels become empowered with the ability to receive, respond, and win RFPs originally sent to the comp set.
Corporate travel business can be a key tool for hotel revenue management, and requires a strategy that’s different from leisure or group business. Specialized tools designed for business travelers make hotel revenue management much easier to navigate.
Bonus:
From tiered advertising packages to venue listing services, hotels have access to a multitude of marketing opportunities through Cvent Advertising. If your hotel doubles as a wedding venue, for example, Cvent offers a unique opportunity for you. List your property on Cvent’s Wedding Spot, a venue-only sourcing platform that has helped thousands of wedding planners and engaged couples find the perfect venue.
Grow your business with powerful hotel revenue management software
With intuitive automation tools, rate resources, and hotel revenue management software systems at your disposal, you’re ready to refresh your property’s revenue management strategy. Up next, we take a deeper dive into the operational side of hotel revenue management and review various hotel revenue management strategies that boost business. Discover a variety of hotel pricing strategies, the value of forecasting, how to track the competition, and so much more.
