Do you have the right high yielding clients? Are you wondering why you have such low rates on fully booked days during peak seasons? Are you missing a chunk of your room production year to date compared to last year? I believe it is about time you analyze the booking behavior of your clients and your current account list.
A lot of hotels do not take the time to really evaluate how their corporate accounts are booking. This is especially damaging during peak and convention/exhibition seasons. Hotels are very eager to give LRA (or Last Room Availability) to get a signed contract, not thinking of the consequence. This means that during peak season, the hotel will not be able to maximize on their revenue opportunity. For example, if a corporate guest books a room with their corporate rate of USD 500 during peak season and the hotel has available inventory; they do not have any choice but sell it at that rate even if they have closed all channels and are only selling Best Available Rates of up to USD 5,000 on their website. Black-out dates can only help you so much since a lot of the corporate accounts are limiting the number of black-out dates that you can have.
I believe the solution to this type of a problem is to really analyze how each of your clients are booking your hotel. Do not focus your attention to clients who are only booking you during peak or convention seasons. To these clients, you can give the highest corporate rate. Make sure that it will be on NLRA (or Non Last Room Availability) so there will be no room commitments during crunch time. Or better yet, just give them BAR or Best Available Rate, you will be fully booked anyways during the times they want to get a room.
Hotels would need to focus their attention to corporate clients that are booking them during off peak seasons. Much care and attention should be given to these types of clients as they can help you when you need them most. Give even more attention to corporate clients that are booking your higher room types. As they can help you with your yielding opportunities. You can also target these clients for high room type promotions like "Suite Deals".
Do not settle and just be satisfied that you are fully booked during high seasons. Analyze your production and make sure that clients that are booking your hotel are quality clients. Make sure you do not have clients that take advantage of using their corporate rates just to get rooms during busy periods.
It is also very vital that you have a healthy mix of clients and make sure that your production is not reliant to one or two big accounts. I remember one of my clients who was enjoying hundreds of room night production on a monthly basis solely given by one account. I checked their account list and was alarmed to find out that they barely had any other corporate clients at the hotel. What was more alarming was that, more than 50% of the total hotel production came from this account. Some major change happened to the account and a huge budget cut was implemented, the hotel was heavily affected by this move. What was once their number one client became non-existent in the following months. Hotels should be very cautious if they find themselves in this type of situation. Make sure to have as much small producing corporate clients in your portfolio as possible. So that if a major volume client disappears the hotel will not suffer so much.
Rochelle Castillejos is the Managing Director & Founder Hotel Revenue Plus. She has over 15 years of industry experience in the fields of Sales and Marketing, Revenue Management, RFPs (Request for Proposals), IBEs (Internet Booking Engines), CRSs (Central Reservations Systems), PMSs (Property Management Systems), RMSs (Revenue Management Systems), OTAs (Online Travel Agencies), and GDSs (Global Distribution System). She oversaw around 55 hotels in the regions of Americas, Europe, Mediterranean, Asia Pacific and Middle East throughout her career.
