You look after for the guest, we look after the rest
A Hotel
Support Agency
We guide and deliver through the whole commercial process from hotel revenue management and customer segmentation and pricing, through hotel digital marketing and technology infrastructure, to online presence and direct sales activities.
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RegiÔtels supports independent hoteliers that represent the quality and culture of their respective regions guiding them with digital infrastructure and approach to free them from solely relying on online travel agencies to drive growth.
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Revenue management has been around for a very long time as a tool to influence behaviour – electricity for example costs less between midnight and five o’clock in the morning and more when people want it. Revenue management in travel started in the early 1990’s with airlines, the idea that one plane going to the same destination can have three or more different cabins (economy, business and first) and within each of those cabins, differing prices depending on when the ticket was purchased. Nowadays, it is impossible to imagine that the person to the left or right of you on an airplane paying the same fee and yet the hospitality industry has been slow to adopt this methodology as an individual hotel will not have the resources to spend on somebody analyzing all of the data. In hotels, there can be rooms with a view and those without, some larger and some smaller. Segmenting the rooms to be able to focus on unique selling points of each enables them to be priced differently on any given day.
When the prices featured are not in line with the local competition, money is either lost or the hotel appears to expensive. In every case, the wrong price will cost the hotel, either through reduced profitability or loss of business. Selling the room for the right price is the only way to survive in a very competitive market and for this reason, the competition needs to be analysed on a daily basis. In city locations, inventory can change so quickly that it is not uncommon to have hourly pricing checks. For regional hospitality, the challenges of encouraging people to book non-chain brands is already present and so it is important always have the most competitive pricing – not necessarily the cheapest or the most expensive – to be able to attract the maximum amount of clients from all of the differing financial brackets to have a revenue mix that translates into a combination of occupancy and rate or RevPAR. Remember, the Average rate is only interesting to your friends, it is the RevPAR that is of interest to your accountant and banker.
RegiÔtels has a team of experts on hand to do the analysis using the tools that you already have (or that can be recommended by us) with reports and other data that we obtain on your behalf. Studying the impact of calendar events (such as public and school holidays in the feeder markets), going over past history, looking at regional and national trends gives an overview and better understanding of the price-elasticity. The Revenue Management team develop strategies in conjunction with the hotel (absolutely nothing is ever imposed) and put them in place while monitoring regularly that it is always up to date and performing as planned. Any changes necessary are spotted and discussed with the hotelier before changes are made.
The sales team is the extension of the on-property operational team. With a database of tour operators, travel agents, MICE agencies and other industry drivers that have a Business to Consumer network as opposed to the Business to Business network enjoyed by RegiÔtels. Renegotiation contracts on behalf of hotels to ensure profitability based on regional best practices ensure that the hotel is always valued as a key partner of the travel company. If a single hotel has a negotiation to be made with such a travel operator, they will have more strength from the force of being part of RegiÔtels and its portfolio of partner hotels for their rate and tariff negotiation (and therefore profitability) than as a stand-alone product. For more information, please visit our videos on the sales process here.
The sales team not only create opportunities in the traditional manner (based on personal relationships with key industry partners), they also manage those relationships and offers to ensure a swift response time to any request based on information from the hotel (taken at the time of onboarding and referring to the pre-approved rate strategy). The client will always receive their offers or requests answered within the target of 24 hours to ensure no opportunity is left unanswered or lost due to delayed response. Having multiple properties in a similar area can also help offset supply and demand enabling a balancing act between those hotels with more or less availability. The sales team put together packages and seek out flash sale marketing opportunities to drive last minute or high-contribution business to ensure both high and low season are cared for. After all, the occupancy is not measured on only the days the hotel is open but every day of the year and sales never stop – each new day brings a whole new opportunity for selling.
Through a review of contracts already signed to those about to be renegotiated, RegiÔtels helps to bring a methodological process to the profitability of each contract signed and helps determine the value add of each of these traditional sources of business. Through a vast network of industry partners from global players to niche actors, RegiÔtels is able to leverage its database of industry contacts to help drive new groups business to your hotel and to follow up the inventory management with release dates and follow up with the payment terms. For those hotels unfamiliar with how tour operators work may be forced to accept payments only after the guest has left for example or maybe at risk if anything goes wrong. RegiÔtels is there to provide its vast and international experience to ensure that the independent hotels individually have the same recognition and importance vis-à-vis industry partners as established hotel groups.
There are two types of marketing: active and passive. Active is where you are spending money to promote your product and is very important. Arguably though, more important for an independent hotel is the passive marketing. This is ensuring that your hotel is correctly presented wherever it be found – on your website (it must be up to date and recent with high definition photographs) and on other websites (the photos should be presented in the correct order and the information accurate) The accompanying text and words describing your property should be compelling and suggesting an experience. Social media is also a key driver of awareness and can be a good source of bookings and therefore it is important to be found easily and ensure communication, almost a conversation, with prospective clients. It is vital to focus on the local and national market as well as the international market, not one or the other. Digital marketing involves fact based research focused on tracking of visitors to the website with actions to encourage pushing clients who come when from X and speaking Y language – increasing the visibility of the website in prospective markets and obtaining more chances of bookings. For more information, you can follow our revenue management video series here going into more detail.
A number of third part travel websites have statistics demonstrating the time taken on each hotel can be as little as a second – one second to determine whether they wish to stay at your hotel or not. If they do like the look of your property, they may be pushed to visit your website and of course, if they do, that is your greatest opportunity to capture a direct booking. That is why it is important to work with these agencies as they provide leads for your direct business as well as spending vast sums marketing their products to attract new clients that otherwise may not have considered your hotel in the first place. It is important to understand the client booking journey and you can find out more and about the research by google into this process by watching our video here.
RegiÔtels is there to ensure that you stand the most chance of securing a direct sale when a prospective client is visiting your hotel information whether it be on your website or any other. Using the right key words, presented in the correct order and format to optimize Google and various travel websites is critical. It is very time consuming to arrange all of the information and photographs in the correct way to boost ranking and therefore get a higher chance of reaching the client and that is where RegiÔtels steps in, the time for the administration of ensuring a brand image online. A common mistake is to have a terrific booking.com presence and terrible website, or vice-versa.