CHALLENGE:
Ascendant had a difficult time convincing this 4-star Lahore hotel with 60 rooms to place its leading OTA, Booking.com, on its Channel Manager.
- The hotel was dependent on Booking.com for bookings and revenue.
- They believed they were already getting maximum revenue from the channel.
- And the hotel did not want to pay an extra 2% commission for the Channel Manager.
STRATEGY
Our Revenue Management and Distribution team analyzed market trends and introduced the following strategy for growth:
- Mobile Promotions – put the right offer in front of 90% of their customers who booked short lead times via their mobile device.
- Primarily focused on 70% last minute bookings (less than 72 hours), our team introduced a special promotion for 7-day advance bookings, making the property/offer attractive to a new segment of shoppers without eroding the price strategy for the core clientele.
- The above strategies worked in tandem to create additional demand against distressed inventory, which also added to increased bookings and revenue.
RESULTS
As a result, the hotel saw a major increase in revenue during the first month of their partnership with Ascendant, taking Booking.com revenue from less than PKR 100,000 in the previous month to a total of PKR 768,000 after 30 days.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- On top of full-time revenue optimization strategies, our Channel Manager offers real-time pricing, along with the flexibility to change the prices multiple times in a day across all channels with a single click.
- 12% of 100K yields a net of 88K. 14% of 768K yields a net of 660K. Conclusion… pay the 2% channel manager fee, it facilitates aggressive pricing strategies to grow revenue and it’s worth it.
- Pay your bills… due to the complex algorithm used by Booking.com to monitor customer behavior, the same client was permanently suspended for declaring false no-shows and failing to pay out commissions.
