Oct 31
I like revenue management. It’s a fascinating discipline. At its most extreme it can get really, really complicated. Complicated is good, as long as complicated is getting the job done.

For most of us, true revenue management is something other people do. I know quite a few revenue managers and most of them, by their own admission, aren’t using all the bells and whistles they could be using. Mainly because they’re just too complicated to use and you get to a point where spending 10% more time and effort on more analysis won’t bring in any more business.

Today – not for the first time – I saw revenue management being abused. Someone set out to make things much more complicated than they should have been. The result was a hotel that pointed itself in completely the wrong direction. The hotel was pointing at its selling price, not the customers.

Continue reading "Rate Optimisation - it's not marketing"

Posted by HotelBlogger

Oct 26
I never thought I'd ever say this - at least not out loud - but I like Ryanair.

I've flown with them three times now. The first trip several years ago - out to Germany which was fair enough. There should have been a return trip of course, but it resulted in such a mess that I was left stranded and I vowed never to darken their door again.

I was wrong of course, the lure of "cheap" is a powerful one. I'm just back from a holiday in Portugal - Ryanair flights out and back, blighted only by a technical failure on the homeward trip which could happen to anyone.

With Ryanair, you need to be aware of what you're buying and WHY you're buying it...

Continue reading "Ryanair - I like it"

Posted by HotelBlogger

Oct 14
I was intrigued by a comment made in an interview I saw recently. The interview was about an “Olympics” style sporting tournament for children, designed to give every child an opportunity to compete in a sporting context.

“I believe there is a place in sport for everyone”, said Dame Kelly Holmes. But the comment that really caught my attention was,

“Children need to learn how to fail”.

Continue reading "Failure makes better hotel marketers"

Posted by HotelBlogger