PRESIDENT'S NOTE

Dear Member,

I hope this note finds you well and seeing as we're at the end of January, hopefully most of you have stuck to your new year's resolutions. At the IHI, it's business as usual planning plenty of events to facilitate networking and training opportunities

I am delighted to share that the first IHI event of 2023 will take place in Thomond Park on 23rd February, where I'll have the honor of speaking with Munster Rugby Head Coach, Graham Rowntree. This is undoubtedly an event not to miss, so if you have not booked your place, please contact Cynthia cynthia.oneill@ihi to secure your spot.

Following that Munster event, the IHI will head over to Connaught, where the IHI Hospitality Business Management Game will take place on the 5th and 6th of March The Game, now in its 38th year challenges teams of students currently studying at the BA programme level within the Tourism & Hospitality Management schools. The Game tests the student's business acumen, and management skills while providing great learning. The Game also allows them an excellent networking experience

Following the Game, the IHI will host its annual student seminar 'Tourism & Hospitality, Your Own Expedition' at 14.30 pm. This year, as in previous years, we are excited to welcome industry professionals to share with attending students a bit about their own careers in hospitality and tourism, career highlights and a little about their current roles. Speakers will also join me in a Q&A

The student seminar is a fantastic opportunity to meet our future young managers and I would encourage all our members to support the very talented teams competing in this year's game by attending the seminar.

Following the seminar, the winners of the Game will be announced and a celebratory and networking evening will take place at 6pm If you can't make the seminar, I highly encourage you to attend the evening event as this will not only support to the competing teams and winners but it will also allow you to meet with industry colleagues and friends.

Also, in case you missed it, our new partnership with the Irish Management Institute (IMI) along with part funding from Restaurant & Hospitality Skillnet now allows us the opportunity to share a range of new programmes delivered by the IMI.

Advanced Negotiation Skills: https://www rhskillnet ie/training/advancednegotiation-skills-15th-march-2023

Change Management: https://www rhskillnet ie/training/change-management-2 Communicating for performance: ...

Finance for Non-Financial Managers: https://www.rhskillnet.ie/training/finance

Front Line Management: https://www.rhskillnet.ie/training/front-line-management7th-march-2023

Strategic Management: https://www rhskillnet ie/training/strategic-peoplemanagement

To register for a course, or should you have any questions, please contact cynthia.oneill@ihi.ie

Fáilte Ireland's online training is also available to you this February;

Marketing on a Shoestring Wednesday, 1st Feb | 10.00am - 12.30pm

Meeting Your Employer Obligations Tuesday, 7th Feb | 10.00am - 11.00am

Introduction to Customer Database Management Thursday, 9th Feb | 10.00am12 00pm

Pricing Your Offers, Contracting and Negotiating your B2B Sales Tuesday, 14th Feb | 10 00am - 1 00pm

There certainly is plenty to keep you going over the next couple of months.

As always, if you have any questions about the above mentioned, please do not hesitate to get in touch with the IHI Team

All the best, Brian Bowler

IHI President

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Available to read in English, Dutch, German, French, Spanish and Italian Click the appropriate link below to Check-in with us today

Check-in: A magazine on the future of travel from Booking.com | by Booking.com Public Affairs | Dec, 2022 | A World Worth Experiencing

EFFORT-LESS REVENUE MANAGEMENT

The benefits of a revenue management system across the business

A revenue management system - or RMS - is not just for revenue departments. Its blend of data-led insights and actions benefit revenue and profitability goals across a hotel’s business.

Whether an independent operation, branded or cluster of properties, hospitality organisations save valuable time and earn incremental revenue with an RMS. Fit for every accommodation-based company, from five-star luxury hotel groups to short-stay rentals, camping and non-traditional accommodation offerings - an RMS benefits the entire team:

●Owners gain the resources to make informed decisions for expansion, product diversification or to increase asset valuation, and attract investors.

●Hospitality executives are supported by deeper insights for increasing the value of an organisation that requires more capital, or to improve efficiency.

●General managers make more informed decisions that reduce costs and increase revenue.

●Revenue managers save extra time to focus on more strategic, revenue enhancing initiatives by automating time consuming tasks like pricing and data entry.

In many hospitality businesses, a lack of revenue management knowledge and practices limits profitability opportunities. The RMS acts as a virtual assistant to crunch numbers and provide insights delivering visibility of business performance for the entire team. This enables them to learn how to price products across the property, whether that’s attracting a non-resident to the spa or a guest booking for early dining.

How hotel groups prosper

Benjamin Caprini, revenue manager at the Société des Bains de Mer (SBM), an independent casino and luxury hotel group in Monte Carlo, was pleasantly surprised by the impact of an RMS: “Every day is different, and the challenges continue to evolve. When we want to change something, we need to do so as a cohesive group versus making individual property decisions. It is nice to work like this as we have a clearer strategy on how best to optimise our profitability.”

“It’s really important to have an RMS, and it’s a common misconception that only big chains use iton the contrary, independent hotels can greatly benefit,” explained Caprini.

The sales and revenue manager at Amazing Evolution, Pedro Pedroso, agrees. The collection of 21 independent full-service properties in Portugal has a small, centralised revenue team managing a fast-growing portfolio, “We are a small team, so it was important to have a reliable system that we knew would help us save time, access the right data, and make the right decisions, faster.”

With too much data for Pedroso’s team to gather and make efficient, effective decisions from, he sought an automated RMS to act as a single source of trust, providing increased access to data across multiple properties and free the commercial team to focus on growing partnerships and the portfolio.

Independents alleviate limited staffing resources

Freeing staff from manual tasks is an increasingly important part of an RMS; accommodation providers worldwide are facing staff shortages, putting an unnecessary pressure on existing staff.

At The Dewberry Charleston (USA), general manager Kristie Rasheed faced this challenge of staff shortages and time-consuming manual pricing processes. Rasheed installed IDeaS’ G3 RMS: “The time-savings from rate loading alone is endless, much less the data-driven intelligence. Charleston is a high-demand, premium market, and IDeaS makes it possible for us to maintain a competitive advantage under the full range of market conditions.”

She credits IDeaS with achieving a new threshold for staffing efficiency and time-savings without sacrificing precision and performance. “We are still in the system daily but only for short periods of time, giving us far more bandwidth for strategic planning. I can let G3 RMS run on autopilot when needed and don’t have to constantly worry about the decisions it’s making.”

Refocusing revenue managers

A common misconception is that RMS will replace revenue managers. The myth busting reality is far from this - a market-leading platform such as IDeaS G3 RMS is designed to supplement a human’s thought processes, not replace it. An automated RMS works within business rules a revenue leader sets, responding 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to any alterations in market conditions to ensure your property is competitive, whilst also aligned to your overall business targets.

Enrique Pacheco, revenue manager at Mandeville Hotel, noted how IDeaS’ G3 RMS was able to fulfil a key part of the property’s revenue strategy: “If IDeaS G3 RMS detects high demand in a certain room type - for example, with superior doubles - it will increase the price for that specific room type but leave deluxe rooms at the same rate. This seems obvious because this is what yielding is about, but no other system offered this functionality.”

Through dynamic pricing, driven by a number of factors such as competitor activity, local events and a hotel’s own pace, an RMS is able to reprice in real-time and encourage guests to book other room types that are not moving, thereby avoiding overbooking in room categories.

What would otherwise be a time-consuming manual task for a revenue manager, with hours of researching rates and data entry of various influencing factors, becomes an intelligent, automated business tool with an RMS. The right RMS is designed to help the revenue manager focus more on revenue strategy rather than day-to-day rate changing – it allows the revenue manager to excel and allow them to work more efficiently.

Why choose an RMS?

The key benefits of an RMS to a hospitality business include versatile pricing, proactive forecasting, manage by exception (removing the need to update rates manually across multiple selling channels), and maximising groups - as well as time saved by reducing manual, repetitive tasks.

“I used to waste a lot of time on data entry and had limited data to work with. I now live in the G3 world with a one-stop-shop, clear view of demand. Having an automated RMS has really helped me strategise more,” said Kelly Gattis, director of sales and revenue at the Sunset Tower Hotel (Hollywood, California).

At Norway’s Lily Country Club, Christopher Gundersen, director of revenue and distribution, selected IDeaS as the best solution to proactively make “the right decisions to maximise revenue possibilities. The automated system is easy to integrate, and allows for much more seamless distribution, more reliable forecasting, and more accurate pricing out in the market.”

For over 30 years, IDeaS has been helping hospitality businesses of all sizes and types maximise their revenue performance. Their solutions transform data into clear, actionable insights, enabling clients to quickly and confidently price, forecast, and report while improving business performance. An RMS should be user-friendly, insightful, and profitable - a careful bundle that IDeaS has crafted using decades of industry and technology experience. Discover more at ideas.com