Many hoteliers and industry analysts are predicting this year will see the true return of meetings and event business to hotels, according to the latest data from Duetto’s annual Revenue Management Trends & Predictions Survey.
However, business has been strong in the transient and FIT market for a while. This means hotels need to better understand the revenue being displaced by a meeting, group, or event, and balance that against the predicted income from transient guests.
To do this, hotels need to understand total guest spend and market demand. Forward-looking market data on events will be crucial to understanding demand trends in local markets.
Sheran Loh, Vice President, Revenue Management (Corporate), Frasers Hospitality, believes hotel revenue teams must work to identify and close opportunities between their transient/FIT and managed segments.
Her focus for 2024 continues to be:
- Transient/FIT – To have control over parity, drive digital marketing budget for top-performing properties, and reduce distribution costs.
- Managed Segments – To renegotiate corporate rates.
- Long Stay – Cost management and balance over transient segment mix.
Frasers Hospitality is a global hospitality operator that offers hotel residences and boutique lifestyle hotels. The company has been running its revenue on Duetto since 2019, with 55 properties revenue optimizing using GameChanger for pricing, ScoreBoard for intelligent reporting, and BlockBuster for contracted-business optimization.
Contracted business focus for Minor Hotels
Contracted business, meetings, and events are playing a central role in the revenue strategy of Minor Hotels Europe and Americas, as key drivers of revenue this year, while maintaining a healthy segmentation mix.
“B2B is a key part of our business mix in 2024, to mitigate the potential impact of decreasing guest spending on B2C segments. By focusing on managing contracted and group business, we are maintaining our advantage and continuing to drive demand and optimize results,” said Cori Galindo, VP Commercial Growth, Minor Hotels Europe and Americas.
“For us, the focus is building the right segmentation for each type of property as it’s the main pillar for creating a successful commercial strategy. A healthy business mix of segments, channels, and feeder markets is the best approach to optimize revenue. In terms of distribution, our focus is on maximizing and improving our profitability through the right distribution model, keeping the focus also on direct digital channels’ growth,” he added.
NH Hotel Group, part of Minor Hotels, has been working with Duetto since 2016. The hotel group has more than 340 properties across six brands running revenue through Duetto. These brands are Anantara, Avani, NH Hotels, NH Collection, Tivoli, and nhow.
Duetto’s Trends & Predictions survey showed that 51.8% of hoteliers hope to increase group revenue through optimized pricing strategies. They’re looking for dedicated group analytics to help optimize room and meeting space rates. Read the full survey results.
