Technology for small and medium-sized facilities

Oct 3, 2019 | Channel Manager

Technology for small and medium-sized facilities

Not long ago, advanced hotel system infrastructure was a domain of big hotel chains. Today, in the era of digital revolution, ignoring technologies, services and solutions provided by software producers can prove to be an enormous obstacle on your way to development. In a longer run, it can even lead to serious difficulties in the context of maintaining high occupancy. What system are worth considering? Can small hotels afford their implementation and maintenance?

Many dream of running their own accommodation facility, however opening and managing a hotel is much more difficult than it might seem. The main challenge is to raise capital to be invested into launching the facility of your dreams. But to think that this is where challenges end is false. Quite to the contrary. Real challenges and obstacles start hoarding the moment you launch your hotel. Small facilities are normally in the hands of a family business or a partnership with a handful of investors owning shares which most commonly leads to fragmentation of decision-making, blurred responsibility and thereby general organisational chaos. Further, lack of formal and centralised facility management as well as lack of professional employee training are among the most common mistakes of small hoteliers.

Small and medium hotel facilities also tend to shy away from modern technologies and solutions that help optimize and automate every-day workload of the reception. To a certain extent this behaviour is understandable – the majority of hospitality facilities avoid investing into technologies as they constitute an additional burden on the budget, a difficult issue especially for small hotels. In particular today, when short-term rentals reach new heights of popularity, forcing hotels into more and more fierce competition to win clients. There is no denying that the enormous number of apartments for short-term rental takes a toll on all types of facilities present on the market; competing with lower rates is normally not an option due to a high and still growing cost of running a hotel. The industry is subject to strict regulations and ever more dependent on internet sales channels – OTAs – each of which charges between 10 and 30% commission. Moreover, in many cases entering into agreement with an OTA results in signing an agreement with so called wide rate parity clauses, restricting hotels from offering rooms at rates lower than those on the OTA’s platform. While many countries banned wide parity rates by now (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland), in Poland their use is still legally accepted. In principle, leading OTAs apply harmonised rules throughout the EU and do not demand rate parity, while exceptions happen.

In the wake of digital revolution, virtually all of hotel services sales moved to the internet. Therefore, in today’s world building a multi-channel distribution strategy that includes a wide range of OTAs is not an option, but a necessity. It’s to be or not to be in hotel industry – both for chain giants and small facilities offering merely a dozen rooms. Yet implementing this strategy can be an arduous task without the support of modern technological solutions.

Technologies for small hotels

It is a common misconception that full and automated information flow in a hotel is only possible in large facilities as it requires an elaborate combination of a bunch of systems – among others, Property Management System, Channel Manager to help manage large numbers of channels (such as hotel’s own Booking Engine and OTAs) and, more and more often, Revenue Management System to facilitate room rates management. Today, all large hotel facilities depend on broad infrastructure systems like the one described above. In their case manual sales and booking management systems simply wouldn’t do. As in small hotels the scale of activity is much narrower, they can still be successful while refusing to invest into modern technologies out of fear of investing large sums into implementation and maintenance of the technological solutions.

Is this fear justified? Is it true that only the largest facilities with big budgets and professionally trained staff can afford expert technological infrastructure? According to statistics, as little as 14% of all hotel facilities in Poland are chains (in Spain the share equals 34%, in Portugal 26%). Vast majority is in private hands, most of them are small or medium sized. Bearing in mind the above numbers, hotel software producers adjusted their solutions to the industry reality and implemented rate policies that allow for wide distribution. It is clear that the cost of building system infrastructure is unavoidable, yet its scale is much smaller than many owners of hospitality facilities (hotels, hostels or apartments) expect.

Fixed rate vs. commission model

The key element in information flow is the Property Management System, the essential tool of every hotelier. Maintenance of the cheapest systems costs as little as a few hundred PLN a year. Extended PMS for the largest facilities can cost as much as several tens of thousands PLNS a year. Yet, it is worth mentioning that such a system helps automate many everyday duties of the reception, such as accepting reservations and introducing them into the calendar, thereby saving considerable sums of money and enhancing service quality.

When considering an investment into hotel technology, you might want to take a closer look at both affordable PMS solutions (e.g. KWHotel or Hotelgram) dedicated to small and medium-sized facilities and sold in a subscription model, as well as a wide range of services and solutions commonly available against a commission fee. It is crucial to make your facility well visible online and provide fast and smooth reservation experience in the times when majority of booking come from online distribution channels. PMS as a strategic system for the hotel should be a starting point, yet it shouldn’t be the only solution you rely on. You will also need a Channel Manager and a Booking Engine. The commission rate for the suppliers of the above solutions normally starts from 2% of the handled reservation. For managers of small-sized hotel facilities YieldPlanet prepared a START version of the Channel Manager. In this purchase option there are no fixed monthly fees. It is also worth noting that nearly all, if not all, OTA platforms rely on charging commission from their partners. This, in turn, means that the hotel only pays for the results, i.e. a successful reservation done via a booking platform. Commissions of the largest companies on the market normally range between 10-20%.

Knowing that strategic compounds of information distribution chain are available at the cost of a few hundred PLN annually (PMS), solutions of the Channel Manager and Booking Engine type can be purchased in a commission model, and OTAs charge their fees exclusively for actual results (value of successful reservations), we can safely state that investing into hotel technology does not constitute an obstacle for the business nor a burden on the budget for already existing facilities of any size. If you want to balance the cost invested into technologies, you can supplement the above mentioned system infrastructure by an RMS or choose a Channel Manager equipped with a feature to aid optimize hotel revenue. Owner of every facility offering over a dozen of rooms should seriously consider investment into a technological management system. A reliable RMS can help effectively boost hotel revenue and reduce to minimum the cost of unsold rooms – according to hoteliers the biggest cost born by every facility manager.

Solutions and features for small hotels

Small and medium hospitality facilities can nowadays pick and choose from among a wide range of solutions to automate processes and optimize revenue, available at affordable prices and in convenient payment models. Many software providers pay great attention to the smallest businesses on the market and offer interesting solutions adjusted to the needs and wishes of small facilities. Example? YieldPlanet offers a solution dedicated to facilities whose reception does not run 24h or is closed on holidays that allows them to block guests arrival on the same day or on a holiday within selected time-frame. Thinking of the needs of small and medium hotels we also designed a feature protecting against human error (e.g. too low or high rate, publishing online higher than actual room availability by mistake). Apartment owners can easily manage rates depending on the number of guests using the rented facility, hostel managers will easily publish rates for beds in shared rooms.

You might also be interested in reading:
Automating your facility with PMS and Channel Manager
New Channel Manager features: MaxLOS and CTD
Property management system (PMS) and Channel Manager – the perfect duo

How to increase your revenue using YieldPlanet’s Channel Manager?

Sep 26, 2019 | Channel Manager

How to increase your revenue using YieldPlanet’s Channel Manager?

YieldPlanet is a Channel Manager founded on the Yield philosophy. As the name implies, its function is yielding, or, in other words, ensuring maximum profitability of your rates and hotel distribution in an optimised and effective manner.

YieldPlanet’s Channel Manager is focused in its entirety on clients’ profits. This premise is as valid as ever, the objective of monthly software updates is to comply with industry requirements and revenue management specialists’ needs in order to boost the revenue.

YieldPlanet is one of the most prestigious business partners for Booking.com, on top of that, it also offers the highest possible standard for connections reliability, which, in turn, translates into fast connections and makes the Channel Manager into the most powerful revenue management tool.

As we are well aware how difficult it is to continuously increase hotel’s revenues,
month after month, we decided to draw up this article. Here we will walk you through the features of the Channel Manager and explain how to use them to increase your revenue. We will also provide you with some tips and professional tricks on the use of the software.

Distribution strategy – setting and frequent optimizing

YieldPlanet Channel Manager allows for creating distribution strategy that will help you manage monthly data analysis executed to make informed and reasonable decisions about the revenue, prices, bookings or intermediary commissions.

Before you get started, take your time to contemplate and set your objective. Next, decide which distribution strategy you are willing to implement and what profits you will expect it to bring. Based on these data you can make decisions on the best integrations, channel management and price strategies fine-tuned to individual seasons of the year.

Connect to nearly 500 integrations to expand your global reach

As opposed to other Channel Managers, YieldPlanet Channel Manager provides integrations to nearly 500 OTAs, tour operators, wholesalers, PMS, CRS, GDS, RMS, metasearch engines and booking systems.

These integrations will help you strengthen your visibility and global reach. Integrating your hotel prices with the most important integrations according to the revenue management and profit analysis data will translate into an increase in hotel revenue.

In-depth intermediary cost analysis (OTA, IDS)

One of the most prominent advantages of our Channel Manager is the amount of data it can access for analysis to later help you make informed decisions.

As you can manage each channel separately, you can also run an analysis on every channel individually and verify its cost, the intermediary commission rates and what improvements can be introduced to increase its profitability.

According to YieldPlanet, using many OTAs or adding new sales channels on a regular basis does not always prove to be good for your business. We suggest that you adhere to a few main channels (max. 12) and manage them in an active and informed manner. Do not let the number of channels and their costs get out of hand.

Manage each channel individually with YieldPlanet Channel Manager

Channel Manager not only provides integrations to a large number of channels, it is also fitted with a series of functions to let you manage each channel separately.

The difference lies in the revenue. It is therefore advisable to run each channel individually to achieve better results. Joint management of the channels can cost you valuable data and trigger bad decisions.

Using YieldPlanet Channel Manager you can submit various rates and inventory to different channels, and, consequently, achieve your revenue objectives.

There is an alternative way to boost the revenue. Revenue Rules module opens and shuts channels named by you to increase rates should the availability drop.

In this way you can activate the channels you don’t normally use for sales and, for instance, only use them in the period preceding the peak season. Moreover, with this function you can also limit the room availability in certain channels or diversify the availability in different channels so that some channels have more rooms to sell than others.

It is a way to stimulate direct sales by, for instance, increasing room availability in your own internal booking system.

Increase or reduce prices as often as you wish in a segmentary mode

To boost revenue you need to always be vigilant, always ready to asses and analyse prices.

With YieldPlanet Channel Manager you can incorporate into your strategy a complete tool helping you to manage your rates and pricing policy in an easy and effective manner. You will notice that your pricing decisions are more precise and better-informed.

In YieldPlanet Channel Manager you can identify 20 rate types depending on room type and pricing policy, which translates into flexibility when setting pricing strategies for individual segments.

On top of that, you can programme sales in individual sales channels to automate the process. Revenue Management Rules function is designed to set automatic price change in any direction, depending on the room availability at a certain period.

Additionally, it will help you plan price changes at any time, so you don’t need to worry about forgetting to do so as the changes will be implemented fully automatically, saving your time.

Summary

Ready to boost your revenue? Contact us to learn more about options to increase your revenue with YieldPlanet Channel Manager. Our team will be happy to provide you with advice and support whenever you need it.

You will also be shown concrete case studies showcasing our clients’ stories of how implementing Channel Manager in their properties helped boost the revenue.

You might also be interested in reading:

8 revenue management tips to boost your hotel
How to choose the best Channel Manager?
Changes in Revenue Management that can help improve the hotel’s performance

How to map an AirBnb in YP’s Channel Manager?

Sep 19, 2019 | Channel Manager, Connections

How to map an AirBnb in YP’s Channel Manager?

Airbnb is one of the key platform that allow you to reach out to your potential customers from Poland, as well as the most remote locations of the world. Airbnb is a hugely popular platform and, for many travelers, the first choice in the search for a place to stay. It is therefore a good idea to include it into your distribution strategy. Particularly, because you can easily map it with YieldPlanet’s Channel Manager. How do you do this? Let us walk you through the process.

Step 1 – create and Airbnb account

To map Airbnb with Channel Manager by YieldPlanet, you need to create an account on your partner’s platform. To do this, go to www.airbnb.pl and select the tab “Register now”. You can register using your own email address. While completing the profile, you will be asked to submit some key information, such as: payment method and information on the VAT. You will also need to verify you account’s data – identity, email address and telephone number. Don’t worry, it will only take a few minutes. Creating an account is free.

Step 2 – prepare your offer

YieldPlanet does not transfer data to individual sales channels connected to the Channel Manager, so you will need to create offers for you facility directly in your Airbnb account. Remember to do it before connecting Airbnb to Channel Manager – all offers can then be automatically loaded and you can start monitoring the efficiency of your new sales channel. How to create offers? Go to the “Host” tab in your profile and click on “Create New Listings”.

Step 3 – connect your Airbnb account with YieldPlanet

In the last step you will connect your new Airbnb account with Channel Manager. To do so, make sure that you’re logged in to your Airbnb account, then log into your account in YieldPlanet’s Channel Manager. Go to the “Partners” tab, find partner labelled AirBnBXML2 and go to editing. Fill out login data (user name and password) as well as Hotel’s ID (Airbnb account ID that you will find after logging to extranet in the “Profile/Account Settings” tab, in the URL address). In the field “Partner Class” select „AirBnBXML2 (145)” from the list, then fill out “Hotel ID” field – here you should put Airbnb account ID (you will find it in the URL of your Airbnb profile). After you have completed filling out the profile, you can authorize YieldPlanet as your Channel Manager.

Having authorised the YP, go again to the “Partners” tab and click on “Get all rooms” to connect AirBnBXML2. This procedure will let you load all listings that you’ve created in the previous step to the Channel Manager. Next, following the same procedure, source all price lists. In the next step prepare AirbnbXML2 mapping and activate your partner in the Channel Manager by clicking on “Activate” button. Your account should be active within 8 hours. In case your offers are not active in the Airbnb extranet after 8 hours, inform us about this fact immediately by writing to support@yieldplanet.com

Why should I connect to Airbnb?

Every day over 2 million customers stays in facilities booked via Airbnb. Airbnb will help you reach out to a new group of customers, who are not frequent hotel guests. However – though the portal was created for owners of apartments and representatives of the short-term rental market – hoteliers can also use the Airbnb offers, provided they offer extraordinary conditions in their facilities and tend to the customers personally. This solution is particularly appealing to owners of boutique hotels and guesthouses, as Airbnb attracts mostly customers searching for unique experiences. Therefore, chain hotels can find using Airbnb as a sales channel much more difficult. Read more on Airbnb website.

All Airbnb offers can be assigned to one of the three following home types:

Entire place: guests have the entire space to themselves (usually includes a bedroom, bathroom and a kitchen).
Private rooms: guests have their own private room for sleeping and may share some spaces with others
Shared rooms: guests sleep in a space that is shared with others and share the entire space with other people.

Connecting Airbnb with YieldPlanet’s Channel Manager helps you automate your sales on one hand, and better protect yourself against overbooking on the other. Airbnb checks facility / room availability with Channel Manager before completing the booking. Should the response sent in real-time be positive, it will pass all the bookings further.

You might also be interested in reading:

Airbnb – switch to a new connection
The best apartment rental websites

Automating your facility with PMS and Channel Manager

Sep 12, 2019 | Channel Manager

Automating your facility with PMS and Channel Manager

KajWare, PMS KWHotel

The perfect duet of the hospitality industry

Automation is a key term for the hoteliers of the 21st century. Only slightly over a decade ago relying on a notebook and your own memory was a standard procedure in property management. Yet memory isn’t always reliable and a pile of papers doesn’t necessarily provide an easy insight into the hotel’s current condition.

As the technological development progressed, new tools for better organised handling of the facility and data storage emerged, thereby remarkably limiting the hotel staff workload. In the HoReCa sector, Property Management and Channel Manager systems lead the way. While they are two independent systems, they first show their true potential once combined together. You will learn more about this here.

Channel manager is the orchestra, PMS its conductor

Every performance of the “Channel Manager and PMS” duet helps you to more effectively coordinate the operation of the entire facility. What areas are involved? Below we have gathered six areas that can be automated with the use of the two tools.

1. Quick availability and price lists synchronization with OTAs

Manual rate and availability updates in every portal individually will soon become a thing of the past. Now you only need to enter a new booking or rate into the PMS and it will immediately send them to the channel manager system for further distribution. You can use the time you just saved to take better care of your customer.

2. No more manual register book

Knowing how many check-ins and check-outs are scheduled for the day is the essence of every hotelier’s work. Good quality hotel software can clearly present these information. What’s more, every customer is automatically registered in an electronic register book. Quick, easy and safe!

3. Access to statistics and reports – optimize your strategy!

By analyzing the information on the channel that brought the customer to your hotel and what real profit the booking will bring you can perfect your marketing and sales strategies. Both PMS and channel manager dispose of an enormous number of reports “for every occasion”. Reports are also automatically send to your email address – this feature will make sure your always up to date!

4. Automatic email and text message notification – for you and your guests

Sending out notifications manually can be a back-breaking task, especially in the high season. PMS and Channel Manager will do that for you. Starting from automatic booking confirmations, through generating discount codes and sending “thank you for your stay” messages. You can also send notifications to your staff.

5. Optimum occupancy management

Have you ever been forced to walk your guest from one room to another because there were no more vacant rooms? Some property management systems will handle booking to as to avoid this inconvenient situation. The system will make sure the way rooms are assigned to guests will maximize facility’s availability and your profit.

6. Improved payment handling

Automated payments are another area that can enhance the service provided to the guest and reduce human error factor on the part of the staff. Cooperation with property management systems will improve communication between the reception and hotel restaurant. Using terminal will make the check-out faster and automatically generated hyperlinks to the payments will help you collect the payments.

Conclusions

PMS and Channel Manager system facilitate the hotelier’s work. But there’s more! This software will also give you the access to crucial information, such as customer’s preferences on virtually every stage of their stay.
You can learn more from our upcoming article!

The discussed facility automation areas are fully handled by, among others, KWHotel software.
Below you can watch an animated presentation of the modern facility management model with the use of the above described PMS.

Watch animation now

New Channel Manager features: MaxLOS and CTD

Aug 29, 2019 | Channel Manager

New Channel Manager features: MaxLOS and CTD

Paweł Rytel

MaxLOS or maximum length of a stay defines a maximum number of days a guest can stay at a hotel, while CTD or Closed to Departure blocks a guest from checking out a property at certain dates.

Both MaxLOS and CTD can be already found in channel manager sections in charge of inserting rates and restrictions.

This is how these new restrictions can boost revenue of your property:

SUPPORT IN CREATING PROMOTIONS: Interested in offering attractive discounts only for stays no longer than 2 or 3 days at exact dates when you need to increase your occupancy? Discount your prices appropriately and use MaxLOS and CTA (Close to Arrival) to sell promotional offers for stays from Saturday to Tuesday for example. Combine MinLOS (minimum length of stay) and MaxLOS parameters to sell promotional offers for precisely defined length of stay.

EASE OF CREATING PACKAGES: Interested in selling packages of only 7 or 14 day stays in your peak season? Combine CTA and CTD to sell, for example, Saturday to Saturday stays only during your high demand season. Sell packages of an excact length of stay.

ADDING SHOULDER DATES TO RESERVATIONS: There is a conference in your property starting Wednesday ending Saturday and you are worried your hotel would be empty on Sunday? Use CTD and MinLOS to sell and accept extended reservations from Wednesday to Sunday only.

MANAGING HIGH DEMAND DATES IN MORE EFFICIENT WAY: Wish your guests stay in exact dates during holidays like New Year’s Eve or main events in your city? Combine MaxLOS with CTD to achieve that goal.

These features have been introduced for the for leading OTAs. We will keep you informed on adding distribution of MaxLOS and CTD to next major OTAs. Please, contact us on sales@yieldplanet.com if you would like to request for this feature to be introduced in any particular connections.

Hotel trends: what not to miss in 2019/2020

Aug 22, 2019 | Channel Manager, Revenue Management

Hotel trends: what not to miss in 2019/2020

Bookassist

For the hotel industry autumn is a time to reflect on marketing plans for the coming year. It is a particularly good time to analyse trends. Looking forward, we should not forget that there is little sense in trying out novelties before we have implemented universal solutions that are popular today. The surge of innovative online tools focuses on direct bookings and increasing margins. Before taking a new course, it is worth to focus on optimising operations that are within our reach today and secure basic tools.

Millennials and Generation Z

The purchasing power currently belongs to Millennials and Generation Z, who will represent almost 60% of global workforce in 2020. Millennials are oriented on experiences and individual activities. They spend 70% more on experiences than on tangible goods. Generation Z is a generation of digital natives who do not know the world before the internet. Always online and up to date, they are used to immediate results and instant feedback. Members of Generation Z need fast and uncomplicated solutions since the time they are able to maintain focus is shorter that for people from previous generations.

The message is clear. We live in times dominated by “experience”. Hotels need to remember that it is up to them if they will establish a required relationship with the customer and then strengthen it during the stay. The customer’s experience on site is the reason why hotels have huge advantage over other companies selling their products or services online.

Even faster mobile Internet

Data transmission speed will soon be 10 to 20 times faster than currently available. 5G network will have a significant impact on the mobile users’ behaviour and expectations. Video files and augmented or virtual reality will be immediately available to the user. This has to lead to radical changes in the process of searching for bookings as users will be able to visualise themselves in the room which they plan to book, opposed to only looking at pictures and exploring the property using a virtual tour.

The mobile first strategy will irreversibly replace the approach expressed in the “mobile version also available” message. New Google crawling method prioritises hotels that invest in the mobile first strategy and severely punishes hotels that neglect mobile users. No hotel can afford to ignore the mobile sphere. OTA platforms are eager to take over bookings at the hotels which are not implementing the mobile first strategy.

Bookassist’s statistics prove that almost 60% of the hotel website traffic is generated by mobile devices (UK and Ireland). There was also a surge in mobile transactions observed in recent years. Revenues are still dominated by desktop channels, however, revenues from mobile channels are growing rapidly. We should remember that the path to purchase does not always start on the computer and the customer journey consists of at least several steps. Failure to optimise in terms of mobile channels is a risk that no one should be willing to take.

Augmented and virtual reality

The possibilities of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) continue to grow with the spread of 5G network. VR requires additional technologies, such as VR headphones. AR involves providing additional digital components accessible via smartphone. For practical reasons, hoteliers should turn to the augmented reality.

Some hotels already use AR to improve the attractiveness of their folders. Maps with the AR function offer the possibility to check out hotel’s surroundings. Some hotels use AR also to make the hotel itself more attractive. This is a great chance to improve guest experience before and during the stay.

Video dominance

Video is definitely the favourite format for Millennials and Generation Z. People currently prefer to watch than read, especially on mobile devices. It is worth to remember that YouTube is now the second largest search engine in terms of volume. Video content is not limited to YouTube – Facebook averages 8 billion views of video content daily. With the advent of 5G era this trend will gain even bigger importance.

Thinking forward, hotels need to invest in attractive, informative video content and ads. Google estimates that by 2021 video content will account for 80% of used media. Video materials and ads are more expensive but soon the cost of not having them will be even bigger.

Chatbots and artificial intelligence

Chatbots are the most widespread form of artificial intelligence. Many hotels have live chats on their website, however, thanks to automation and short response times, chatbots are more practical and reduce strain on employees. Chatbot is used for solving simple issues and respond via a messenger to questions frequently asked by the customer who is visiting the hotel website. The time saved thanks to this tool can be used by the employee to focus on an individual approach to the customer.

Intelligent chatbots feature a machine learning function. This means that they use knowledge acquired in previous interactions with customers to reply to inquiries. Most chatbots use text communication but voice input will soon be very common.

When deciding on chatbot service, it is worth to consider the possibility to integrate it with a booking search engine to share rates and availability with customers. Bookassist offers such combination in the Zoé chatbot by Colossal Factory. Other key characteristics of a chatbot:

·        Possibility to „train” the chatbot by adding personalised questions and answers

·        Multilingualism

·        Self-learning function through machine learning – increasing chatbot’s expertise

·        Availability on all devices

·        Option to connect with live chat

·        Option to call back or continue the chat if an answer is not readily available

·        Most importantly, the ease of providing information that helps to make a booking

Voice assistants (DVA)

We are observing a surge in the popularity of voice assistants, such as Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri or Microsoft Cortana. Hotels also increasingly use DVA to make their guests’ stay more enjoyable.

Voice assistants and the Internet of things are designed to improve the comfort of stay at the hotel. Hotel guests can use voice input to adapt room facilities to their needs, for example to control lightening or temperature. Voice commands are also useful for setting the alarm clock, playing favourite music, ordering meals or calling housekeeping, as well as for reporting shortcomings. Hyper-personalisation of services is a sign of our times.

AI robots with voice recognition function are already being used at hotels, for example, in the Yotel chain. They are used to welcome guests, answer simple questions or order room service. This is still new today, however, robots will become regular travel companions in the coming years.

Voice search

The statistics are surprising. Comscore studies show that by 2020 more than half of the searches will be conducted via voice. Mediapos estimates that by 2020 around 30% of all searches will be done without a screen. The age of searching via text is slowly fading into oblivion.

Focusing on voice search has to entail changes in the e-marketing approach. SEO strategy and content management have to be compatible with it. It is necessary to assess the character of possible inquiries. Will the user ask general questions since he is at the beginning of his path to purchase, or will he ask questions suggesting that he is ready to book? Does the website content facilitate conversation and provide accurate and clear answers?

Well edited FAQ site is a good step towards optimisation in terms of voice search. It is also worth to add schema validators to show content in Google snippets, customise My Business website and improve page load time as well as its mobile user-friendliness.

Visual search

Visual search is not new, however, it gains attention especially since the introduction of Pinterest Lens and Google Lens tools. Users hold their smartphone to a given item/object and in this way get the information or search for images in Google by clicking on the camera icon in the search window.

In response to this trend, hotels need to examine their visual content. Key aspects include high quality materials, stirring imagination, relative uniqueness, consistent style on different platforms and presence on the most important sites, such as Instagram and Pinterest.

You need to be a visual content creator and manager at the same time. You need to follow Instagram and Pinterest, share interesting pictures related to the property and add them to your website, with the authors’ consent.

There are many ways to appear in visual searches. For example, it is worth to add attractive pictures of tourist attractions in the surroundings to reach tourists planning future trips.

Discovering new markets – China

The number of Chinese tourists in Europe grew by 65% in the first half of 2017! Number of visas issued to the Chinese for visiting Europe amounted to 2.5 million, while 5 years earlier it was only 1.2 million.

Before you take on Chinese tourists as your target, remember that they rarely travel alone and their trips are organised by Chinese intermediaries.

You do not need to make big investments to reach the Chinese market. For example, Wego platform has decent visibility in China and can be accessed through the Bookassist Meta Search service. As good results are achieved, you can experiment with other portals and further engage in advertising in China and localising your content for this market.

Biometric technology

Biometric technology and new methods of recognition are gaining interest in the hotel industry. They allow hotels to improve quality of their guest service and effectively customise offered services. Main tools used by hotels include face recognition, fingerprint recognition and retinal scanning.

Hotels value the promptness and discretion of such facilities as opening rooms with a fingerprint scan or face recognition check-in. Biometric technology may become an indispensable hotel component in the near future.

Blockchain

Blockchain is a secure distributed database used to register modifications of data and performed transactions. It is a register in which each block of data is secured and transactions are added to time-stamped transaction journal with all information and record of changes. Transactions linked into block chains are irreversible. The system is very secure; it is virtually impossible to break the blockchain network.

Blockchain technology is in its infant stages in the mass market but it is expected to be used in the hotel sector in the future. For example, the travel industry is based mostly on the transfer of data between companies. Blockchain improves protection of customer data which in turn has a positive impact on the travel experience and customers’ trust when it comes to sharing personal data.

It all depends on how this technology will be taken on by the market. The system is not free and it does not speed up transactions. It can only be useful to different industries, including the hotel industry, when it is used more commonly.

From new technologies to new measurements

Traditional method of calculating return on investments for each medium individually is no longer reliable as it only shows the result for a single channel and does not consider its impact on the overall success. We suggest that you analyse the total income increase to assess the impact of all paid portals.

There are many different attribution models available, however, we need to have a good understanding of attribution before we decide on the multichannel model. This can be explained with a simple analogy. When a football player scores a goal, does he get 100% credit or does the defender who passed the ball to the midfielder who then passed it to the striker share the credit with him? The first answer would suggest that other players are redundant, which of course is not true. Thus, if we translate it into marketing, there are no grounds to discard assisting platforms and focus only on the campaign that the customer clicked on last.

Assessing the value of each channel is not easy, but tools such as Google Analytics significantly improved the system of reporting assisted conversion and attribution. Those reports should be the starting point for any calculations.

Summary

Today we can observe much more technological advances than at any other time in history. We gain more possibilities every year. However, what still matters the most is the optimization of current actions. Mobile channels should remain a priority. Most of the new tools are focused on mobile channels, thus, we have to keep up to date, continuously improve our property’s online presence and only then gradually implement new solutions.

How does overbooking influence hotel revenue?

Aug 16, 2019 | Channel Manager, Revenue Management

How does overbooking influence hotel revenue?

Booking cancellations and no-shows are common phenomena throughout the hospitality industry. While they disrupt normal functioning of a hotel, they also afford an excellent opportunity to generate additional income. Unfortunately, using this opportunity to your advantage is harder than it seems – you need to be able to identify certain regularities, trends and patterns in guests’ booking behaviours. You will also need to forecast such trends and behaviours with precise accuracy based on available data. Yet, the potential benefits for the hotel may prove big enough to be worth the risk. How to make extra revenue and turn overbooking into success? How to create an effective overbooking strategy?

Mission: optimization

Generally speaking, the most fundamental task for a person in charge of hotel’s revenue, that is executive director or revenue manager, is to take all possible actions aimed to maximise yield for the hotel owner. It takes well-planned strategies and bold improvised decisions on many levels to achieve this challenging aim. Broadly understood optimising and managing hotel revenue, including mapping out the overbooking strategy, is a good example of a hotel management field that requires an extensive experience, industry knowledge as well as up-to-date advanced analyses and prognoses. Properly defined revenue management strategy can boost hotel’s financial results and sustain clients’ loyalty and satisfaction on a stable level.

In the recent years issues concerned with revenue management and overbooking have been broadly discussed. While a few years ago hotels would mostly shape their own price policy and continuously adjust it to the changing market, today this process is largely automated. This was achieved through including Revenue Management Systems into standard hotel system architecture consisting of PMS, Booking Engine and Channel Manager. Yet it’s wrong to assume that investing in innovative technological solutions will be an answer to all problems. While Revenue Management Systems facilitate the work of both reception and management staff, their operation needs to be continuously controlled, optimized and adjusted to the changing environment and individual business objectives.

Cancelled bookings and overbooking

In principle, hotel policy is to avoid confirming more rooms than the available capacity of a hotel at a certain time, yet hotels often take the risk of overbooking and confirm more reservations than they can in fact accommodate. Why is that? The answer is simple – overbooking is probably the most efficient way of boosting hotel’s financial results. Booking cancellations happen in every hotel, to a greater or lesser extent. If done early enough, chances to sell the room again are fairly big. The situation is more complicated if a client decides to cancel their reservation last-minute. Situations like this one are not uncommon. On one hand, hotels accept a certain amount of reservations not guaranteed with advance payments, business travellers, on the other hand, happen to change their plans, while tourists can fall victims to flight delays or other chance events. Hoteliers are also well acquainted with the type of customers who do not show up despite having booked and paid the room.

Taking the above factors into consideration, it is clear that achieving 100% occupancy and, consequently, using full economic potential of the hotel is virtually impossible. To reduce revenue loss, hoteliers increasingly decide to implement overbooking strategies in their establishments – it means that some of the rooms are sold twice as it is calculated that otherwise the rooms would remain unused due to booking cancellations and no-show guests. The challenge here is to implement a strategy that would, on one hand, boost the hotel profitability as expected without compromising guest satisfaction on the other. Unsurprisingly, it is not an easy task. Tourism industry tends to be capricious and tightly correlated with weather conditions, economy and chance events that can turn long-traced tendencies upside down. All this makes estimating cancellation factors and no-shows all the more difficult and complex. What’s worse, defining separate factors for different types of rooms or time remaining until arrival is recommended to obtain possibly accurate data. Estimates accuracy plays a vital role in the process and it’s dependent, first and foremost, on the amount and quality of back data – preferably collected in a central property management system (PMS). Based on this data it is possible to forecast the number of booking cancellations, no-shows, understays or stayovers.

Auto-replenishment

Accurate factor estimates are a key to success only in theory. Experience shows clearly that, to implement overbooking strategy, we need to assume a broader perspective on the situation. Nowadays hospitality services are sold through a range of channels, directly (through reception staff, call centres and hotel booking systems), as well as via multiple OTAs. The latter sales channel is guilty of complicating our task, as many OTA services have designed and implemented a series of tools allowing for active handling of the cancelled reservations. One of the most common tools is the auto-replenishment. In a fully unattended, automated way it puts rooms vacated due to booking cancellations back up for sale. According to Booking.com statistics, as many as 73% of such rooms are successfully sold again, thus having a positive impact on the hotel’s financial results, yet it seriously inhibits effective implementation of the overbooking strategy.

How to solve this problem? Not all repeated bookings done via OTAs are welcome at a certain moment but have to be accepted due to certain agreements in the cooperation terms. To avoid repeated booking you can raise the price of the room or limit the demand on the room otherwise – e.g. setting MinLOS to 3-5 days. Taking such action should bring the expected result, yet it requires higher staff involvement. It would be much more reasonable to implement solutions bringing the same effect with minimum staff involvement. We will discuss it further in the text.

Optimal system infrastructure vs overbooking

A precondition for an efficient and smooth operation of a hotel is the automation of its repeatable processes with technological solutions available on the market. It is no different in the case of overbooking as it can be effectively managed via the products offered by YieldPlanet.

Our Channel Manager uses centralised allotment to continuously implement overbooking strategy, at the same time avoiding the situation when some guests need to be walked to another establishment. This system allows for overselling the hotel capacity, yet it preserves the auto-replenishment blocking rule which means that rooms vacated through booking cancellation are not put up for sale again. Revenue rules are another new function to do the overbookings in a controlled manner and manage them effectively. You can execute this strategy by differentiating room availability and prices in various channels. It is vital that the prices are high enough – in the worst case scenario the staff will be able to walk the guests to nearby establishments of the same or higher category without paying extra costs. At this point it is worth pointing out that if you decide to start implementing overbooking strategy in your property, you need to have detailed procedures for situation when you need to walk your guests. This includes a list of trusted hotels that will accept your guests.

Therefore, you might want to consider adding an advanced Revenue Management System to your hotel system architecture – e.g. YieldPlanet’s Price Optimizer. RMS will further automate auto-replenishment avoidance process in individual OTAs through adequate price or MinLOS manipulations, as described earlier in the text. As the burden of manually modifying room offer parameters will be taken off of the revenue manager, they can gain save a significant amount of time to optimize currently applied strategies, perform in-depth analyses of customer behaviour patterns and search for new ways of boosting the property profitability.

New connection: Traveliko.com

Jul 29, 2019 | Channel Manager, Connections

New connection: Traveliko.com

YieldPlanet has a new connection to the Channel Manager with an OTA: Traveliko.com.

Traveliko.com offers the cheapest distribution channel for hotels to sell their room online and compete with other OTAs. The OTA channel aims at rebalancing the online distribution landscape. This is a 0% commission OTA – a free distribution channel, with main focus on hotels on the Asian market. Now the company wants to open up for the Europena market to reach new horizons.

“The integration process went smooth. We are happy to welcome Traveliko.com in the group of our connectivity partners now” – says Tomasz Fitulski, Head of Implementations at YieldPlanet.
“We are delighted to be working with YieldPlanet and now be able to offer their clients the cheapest distribution channel available in the market.” – adds Yann Gouriou, co-founder and CEO of Travelico.com.

More information for hotels interested to connect to Traveliko.com can be found here.

The best apartment rental websites

Jul 12, 2019 | Apartments, Channel Manager

The best apartment rental websites

Which channels to use to efficiently boost profits on renting apartments ?

A successful sales strategy involves the use of a variety of diverse and mutually complementary channels. Using of only one or two distribution channels in an extremely competitive industry, such as tourism and hospitality, first of all hinders the full exploitation of the facility’s potential, and in addition it makes the stakeholders heavily dependent on specific bookings and conditions they set. We may try to compare the above statements to our own financial policy: if we plan to invest a certain amount of money and want to disperse the investment risk, we would acquire several different blocks of shares of different companies rather than play va banque by acquiring shares of one company for all the money we have. By founding our sales solely on our own booking system and one or two leading OTA (Online Travel Agency) websites, on the one hand we can hope to reach a huge number of prospects in a relatively easy way, and on the other hand – any changes in the positioning of the facility’s offer or the amount of commission made by this website may have a significant impact on revenues.

First: the leading OTAs
While the direct sale of apartments generates the highest profits, it is generally responsible for a lower percentage of total revenues. Therefore, when developing an optimized distribution strategy, at least a few agent websites (OTA) should be taken into account, after a very careful selection. It is worth taking into account the leading websites in this category, i.e. Booking.com and Expedia – both in Poland and worldwide they generate a significant share of bookings. Giving them up would significantly limit distribution; however, an optimized distribution strategy should primarily be based on a definitely broader spectrum of channels available. Data provided by the YieldPlanet Channel Manager clearly indicates that the optimal number of channels for the apartments is between 4 and 6; however, assuming that these are the hotels that shape the market and are the trend testers, this number is likely to increase. It is very likely that in the years to come, better results will enable the apartments to increase the number of agents.

Second: the profiled OTAs
With leading OTAs, our offer can reach the farthest corners of the world – to customers who would have been hardly accessible to us without appropriate tools and massive promotion investments. Still, it is worthwhile to complete our distribution strategy with a few smaller OTA websites, which will enable us to reach customers potentially interested in our offer. If your apartment is located in a place frequently visited by Russians and/or potentially of interest to Russians, it is worthwhile incorporating into the distribution strategy the local OTA websites that enjoy great popularity in Eastern Europe – for example Ostrovok – or in Central Europe – Szallas.hu / Nocleg.pl. An interesting option is also the Chinese Ctrip website, thanks to which the Czechs and Hungarians have already been winning guests from the Far East.

By analyzing the potential of a specific property and its immediate environment, it is relatively easy to pinpoint potential agents who will guarantee us the ability to reach the target group of customers and at the same time will offer competitive terms of cooperation (e.g. lower commissions). Targeting the guests’ nationality is not the only available option to search for new OTAs to cooperate with. If you have a apartment located in a tourist resort that offers excellent conditions for winter sports, look for OTAs that aggregate such facilities. Are you the owner of a luxury property? Highlight it on websites dedicated to wealthy customers who are looking for premium locations – such as Prestigia, LifeStyleHotels or Mr & Mrs Smith. It is worth looking for OTAs that specialize in targeting customers representing a specific profile. While these are niche websites, they usually provide a high conversion rate and a low cancellation rate, which is also of great importance.

Third: Airbnb
Our apartment distribution strategy surely cannot fail to include Airbnb, a first choice for many when looking for accommodation for a private or business trip. Airbnb emerged from the sharing-based trend. In sharing economy, instead of buying a good or service, we simply rent it or share it with others. According to this rule, a landlord can rent a flat to another person while it is vacant. And what if we set up a platform where we could search for all the apartments and flats that are rendered available in this manner? This is how Airbnb entered the short-term rental market. According to YieldPlanet data, Airbnb generates more bookings than alternative OTAs or proprietary booking systems, which is why it is worthwhile taking advantage of the website’s potential.

Fourth: Booking Engine
In order to avoid unnecessary risks and consequently potential losses, in planning the distribution strategy it is advisable to include many mutually complementary channels in it. However, the starting point should be the Booking Engine, i.e. a proprietary booking system that would enable us to make bookings directly on the property’s website. As shown by data reflecting the share of bookings registered in the YieldPlanet Channel Manager for 2018, the potential for growth of direct bookings in Poland still remains high when compared to Western European countries.
Why is it worth striving to compete for a direct customer? First of all, due to the chance of avoiding the commissions that have to be paid to the OTA account in the indirect channel model. The growing position of the leading players entails the risk of further increase of the cost of winning guests, so it is worth securing the higher share of bookings made via our proprietary booking system. While the task is not a simple one, the efforts made in this regard should translate into tangible benefits in a relatively short period of time.

Fifth: cooperation with businesses
Apartments are becoming increasingly more popular with business customers, so if you manage a facility located in a large city, especially near business districts, it is advisable to include this group in your distribution strategy In order to reach business customers you should mark your presence in the HRS (Hotel Reservation Service). Another effective method of winning guests is to cooperate with wholesalers, i.e. agents acting as intermediaries in the apartment distribution process, such as Hotelbeds.

While developing a distribution strategy, you can not only effectively diversify the sources of revenue but also minimize the risks. An effective strategy, however, should be first and foremost a flexible strategy, adapted to constantly changing market conditions and customers’ habits. It is therefore necessary to monitor the market on an ongoing basis, automate the sales process using available technological solutions (including PMS, Channel Manager and RMS), and constantly analyze data and make business decisions on their basis.

Looking for solutions that will help you manage your facility’s availability? Contact us – we will be happy to provide you with a dedicated offer for the YieldPlanet Channel Manager.

You may also be interested in reading:
How to build an on-line apartment distribution strategy

Build a distribution strategy for apartments

Jul 4, 2019 | Apartments, Channel Manager

Build a distribution strategy for apartments

Increasingly often, short-term rentals are the first choice over traditional accommodations, primarily among individual customers, but also among business customers. However, continuously growing interest and, as a result, competition, have made property owners and property management companies constantly optimize their online distribution strategies. How to do it effectively? How should the online distribution strategy for short-term rentals differ from the strategy applied by hotels?

Dynamic development of alternative accommodations
Quite obviously, short-term rentals has transformed the landscape of the tourism industry for good and forced hotels, guesthouses and other traditional accommodations to thoroughly redesign their current sales and distribution models. Originally, the redesign activities focused only on traditional facilities; at the initial development stage the apartments, given the relatively weak market competition and a more favourable pricing policy compared to hotels, did not have to be excessively customer-oriented. However, growing interest, combined with above-average rates of return on investment in short-term rentals, in a short period of time led to an abrupt increase in their number and the consequent necessity to move the existing customer acquisition strategies to a completely new level.

The market growth was fostered, on the one hand, by competitive prices and, on the other hand, by the global trend where the customers seeking uniqueness, genuineness and customized services would decide increasingly more often to stay in locations alternative to traditional accommodations – especially chain accommodations, which, in order to guarantee the same standard, were similarly equipped regardless of their location. All this translated into a great number of apartments becoming available for rent in a short period of time, especially in the most popular tourist destinations.

This is perfectly illustrated by the statistics published by the biggest players on the distribution channel market (mainly OTAs – i.e. Online Travel Agencies). Alternative accommodations already account for approx. 20% of Booking.com‘s revenues. Airbnb, the short-term rental market leader and one of the icons of the sharing economy alongside Uber, generates almost all of its revenue from short-term rentals. While the website owes its current position to the immense interest of individual customers, it has been increasingly more active in the USD 1 trillion worth business travel sector. As a result, over the last two years the number of corporate bookings has tripled and reached 15% of the total number of bookings. By 2020, the share of bookings made by companies is expected to reach 30%!

How to effectively develop the suite distribution strategy?
Operating in such a dynamically evolving market is definitely challenging; therefore numerous holiday suite owners decide to entrust their management to professionals. Today there are dozens of companies providing such services; however, they do not always succeed in fully exploiting the potential of managed properties. The reason for that is that building an effective online distribution strategy is extremely challenging a task. On the one hand, it involves extensive expertise and know-how and, on the other hand, the use of professional tools supporting the sales process automation.
While it is worthwhile drawing on good practices from the hospitality industry, it is misleading to expect that a 1:1 copy of the distribution strategies used by leading hotel facilities will yield the desired outcomes. Why being so? This is because the apartments are characterised by exceptional uniqueness. While the hotels as a rule offer at least several identical rooms (similar in size and style), it is practically impossible to find two identical apartments. This is both an asset and a major obstacle, requiring the property manager to manage the property skilfully. This is due to the fact that the number of possible options for manoeuvring is significantly limited, which means that the distribution strategy should be tailor-made each time. Given the fact that each suite constitutes a unique resource and juggle with its availability is impossible, careful and well-thought-out price management is essential as well. Excessive under- and/or overpricing may indeed have a significant impact on the RoI.

So, how to effectively manage the suite distribution? First and foremost, it is crucial to carefully analyze their potential, showcase them skilfully and select the most appropriate distribution channels. According to the number of bookings recorded by Channel Manager YieldPlanet, maximizing suite revenue goes hand in hand with maximizing the number of available sales channels. The majority of the short-term rentals we cooperate with use 4 to 6 sales channels, yet increasingly more facilities operate through 7 to 10 channels. The more channels we use, the more difficult it is to manage them. For each channel a separate strategy needs to be developed, and it should be thoroughly analyzed with respect to its profitability, the amount of commission charged by the given channel for cooperation, and other factors as well. On this basis, it is advisable to develop a proprietary online distribution strategy.

Optimally designed IT ecosystem
The management of a significant number of distribution channels involves the application of tools that will substantially enable to automate the process of managing suite prices and availability. Today it is virtually impossible to introduce all the necessary modifications and manage the calendar manually. This is especially true if we plan to establish cooperation with at least some of the leading distribution channels, such as Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia or local booking portals. The process of multi-channel management automation can be supported by solutions that has already been used by hotels for years and widely used in the short-term rental market for some time now.

What kind of solutions are they? First of all, the PMS system (property management system), which should include the entire inventory, i.e. all managed properties. It is PMS that will monitor the current number of available properties and enter new bookings directly into the calendar. The system will also feed information on apartment’s availability into the next link in the data flow chain, i.e. Channel Manager. This system, in turn, allows to effectively manage the multi-channel sales process. Provided that the short-term rentals are being offered on several booking websites at the same time, modification of the offer and customization of prices to the current market conditions will be possible in real time from the level of one tool, without the need to log in to each channel separately.

Connecting the Channel Manager with the PMS is essential while managing the suite availability. Since each suite offers unique qualities and often it is not possible to replace it with another similar suite, it is of utmost importance that the system sends real-time information about the suite’s availability to OTA in order to prevent double bookings at the same time (i.e. overbooking).

Imagine a situation where we have available apartments whose interiors are inspired by the culture of different countries. So there is a Japanese, Chinese, American, Italian, Swedish and French suite. If a guest cares particularly to stay in a Chinese suite and they book one, but there will be an overbooking situation, i.e. another guest books the same suite at the same time, it will most likely be an issue for the suite manager; this issue will be difficult to solve or even impossible to solve in such a way as not to offend the guest who will not be able to stay in the Chinese suite. The sales strategy for this type of facilities is different than in the case of many identical rooms, as it enforces the need for detailed and careful price management and provides fewer opportunities for manoeuvring within the suite inventory.
In this particular case, it is extremely vital that the system immediately changes the status of the facility’s availability. Of course, the channel manager brings many more advantages. This translates into higher suite occupancy rates, greater control over the margins paid to the agents and huge time savings for the managers.
What is probably the most interesting for the suite managers at the moment is the cost of developing this type of infrastructure. And even though it may seem that these solutions are reserved exclusively for the biggest market players, in fact things look completely different. In most instances, investment in expensive IT infrastructure is not necessary. The presented systems are usually cloud-based solutions, settled on the basis of a fixed, monthly subscription fee or based on a commission system, which makes them available to virtually everyone.
Are you looking for a solution that will help you manage your short-term rentals? Contact us to receive an offer for the YieldPlanet Channel Manager.

Case study: Aurora Luxury Hotel & Spa, Greece

Apr 8, 2019 | Case Study, Channel Manager, PMS

Case study: Aurora Luxury Hotel & Spa, Greece

The first hotel to take full advantage of the interface between YieldPlanet’s Channel Manager and Opera

Aurora Luxury Hotel & Spa is an independent vacational, four-star property, located in the island of Santorini, in Greece, and the perfect place to host one’s dreams of the perfect holiday in the Cyclades. This luxury property offers twenty-one suites that blend the traditional architecture with modern touches and a range of luxurious amenities.

The hotels had been using YieldPlanet’s Channel Manager, Book Online Now Booking Engine and Oracle Suite 8 PMS since 2016.

Managing such a unique property as Aurora Luxury Hotel & Spa comes with particular challenges and requirements. This is why, one year later, when YieldPlanet released the interface with Oracle, the hotel management decided to take full advantage of the interface between YieldPlanet and Opera. The main expectation to automate the process of retrieving reservations, pricing and inventory updates. Aurora Luxury Hotel & SPA would become the first hotel to use the interface. “I had implemented many interfaces between Oracle Cloud and Channel Manager systems, so my biggest concern was how familiar the other system would be with this interface”, says Αkis Moutselos, Technical Director at Eurotel / Aurora Luxury Suites. All original concerns were immediately addressed. “We have received the support we needed throughout the process. The person responsible for the integration process on YieldPlanet’s side was very helpful”.

The key challenge at the beginning of the cooperation was to agree on how mapping should be done.

“Once the conditions have been determined, the process went smoothly. It took a few days to complete the implementation and the property started using the PMS-Channel manager interface”, Akis Moutselos adds.

Theodoros Katsimbras, SVP-Global Business Development Director at Book Online Now, who works closely with the property has followed the proceedings and confirmed that the connection is working smoothly.

„The integration we made for Aurora Luxury Suites in Santorini was especially important for us, as for YieldPlanet it was the first implementation between Oracle Opera PMS and YieldPlanet’s Channel Manager. We had a very experienced partner on the other side, which helped the full connection process to go fast and smoothly. I would like to thank Mr. Αkis Moutselos for his professionalism and cooperation.” – says Tomasz Fitulski, Head of Implementations at Yieldplanet.

Aurora Luxury Hotel & Spa has been using the interface for some time now. The decision to be the pilot for the interface between YieldPlanet and Opera has come with no regrets:

“We had high expectations that were met. I rate this cooperation very high”, concludes Akis Moutselos.

Are you using the Oracle Suite 8 PMS and looking for a channel manager? Contact us!

YieldPlanet now has 500 connected partners!

Feb 28, 2019 | Channel Manager, OTAs

YieldPlanet now has 500 connected partners!

We are happy to announce that over half thousand partners have trusted us and are officially connected with us.

Who are our connections?

• The 506 partners belong to one of 7 categories: OTA, wholesalers, PMS, RMS, CRS, GDS and booking engines.
• The most numerous group among YieldPlanet’s connected partners are PMSes – their number has just exceeded 100. If your PMS is still not synchronized with YP’s Channel Manager, please reach our support team.
• YieldPlanet is a preferred partner of some of the most important companies in the hospitality and technology industry. To name only a few: Agoda (Innovative Supplier), Booking.com (Connectivity Partner), HRS (Preferred Partner), PremierBooker, Hotel360°, Oracle (Gold Partner) and Microsoft (Partner Network).
• We have recently established connection with AirBnB, which we announced proudly a couple of days ago.

We have noticed an interesting trend in the hospitality industry currently, consisting in consolidation of partners. Stronger companies have been taking over smaller partners. Revenue management is of main interest of well-run hotels and only a handful of channel managers, among them YieldPlanet’s, can offer RMS integrations.

RMS connections seem to be another topic which is interesting to be aware of and to watch. Revenue management is a hot topic recently and is an increasing trend that RMSes are looking for integrations with channel manager providers. Among our recent connections you will find such revenue management systems as: YieldPlanet’s Price Optimizer, Ideas or BeOnPrice.

When it comes to technical standards, the fragmented nature of the hospitality industry should be taken under consideration. This causes that many tech companies build tech in different ways, which makes management companies, brands, real estate owners and general managers ask for unified technology and not all channel managers respond to such calls with their platforms. YieldPlanet’s solution is an example of technology that surpasses this challenge.
We are proud to be expanding our global network by being connected to so many solutions of our trusted partners, offering our clients the flexibility to easily integrate our product with the system which they use. Thank you for your trust and let us grow together!
See who is celebrating with us – the full list of connections is available here.

Airbnb – switch to a new connection

Feb 13, 2019 | Channel Manager, OTAs

Airbnb – switch to a new connection

It is our pleasure to announce that YieldPlanet has received certification from Airbnb as data provider for channel manager, which takes our cooperation to another dimension.
YieldPlanet’s customers can now benefit from full support from the partner’s account managers and tech support.

“The connection with AirBnb has a strategic importance for us. We believe that this step will take us to a new dimension of cooperation with Airbnb, and most importantly bring value to our clients.” – says Claudio Limacher, CEO of YieldPlanet.

Besides the standard connectivity to AirBnB to deliver rates and availability to the channel and receiving reservation, the connection has a number of advanced features that allows YieldPlanet clients to sell on AirBnB
– Smart overbooking protection mechanism is used whenever Airbnb calls YieldPlanet for confirming availability before finalizing any booking. This advanced solution guarantees safety to all of our clients – even f changes are on the way, availability will be confirmed in YieldPlanet’s calendar.
– Minimum lengths of stay (MLOS) and Closed to arrival (CTA) parameters are now distributed and delivered, as daily parameters and tokens are generated automatically without any manual actions required.
– Authorizing YieldPlanet as a provider of data to Airbnb has now become extremely easy. Customers can find an authorization button in the channel manager and with 2 simple clicks the whole procedure is finalized.
– Reservations are delivered in real time. Usernames and passwords are no longer required in the channel manager to authenticate the connection between Airbnb and YieldPlanet. This is the up-to-date solution to keep the highest standards of data security.
– Also Hotels can use Airbnb, as allotment can be set there as a value higher than 1. Please contact your AirBnB market manager for more details.
„Establishing this connection is revolutionary. It allows us to not only limiting to single property owners, but also opens our doors to standardized properties with a variety of availability offers” – Paweł Rytel, Product Manager at YieldPlanet, emphasizes.
YieldPlanet’s customers can start new Airbnb connections in just a few clicks.

If you are already using YielPlanet Channel Manager, please, contact YieldPlanet’s support team should you find any issues regarding your connections or have any questions.

Property management system (PMS) and Channel Manager – the perfect duo

Feb 8, 2019 | Channel Manager, Revenue Management

Property management system (PMS) and Channel Manager – the perfect duo

Digital revolution is gaining momentum and increasingly changes the landscape of the hotel industry. It enforces constant updating of both the business model, as well and the marketing and distribution strategies. Thankfully, increasingly advanced and complex IT solutions, allowing both more efficient guest service and maximizing the performance of a hotel can be the remedy for hoteliers. How does the system infrastructure influence the occupancy rate, finances and guest experience? How to optimally arrange it around the central Property Management System (PMS)?

Free flow of information: PMS, Channel manager, OTA

In order to realize how modern software and opportunities provided by the Internet influence the ongoing functioning of a hotel, it is important to track down the connections between the key systems utilized by modern hotels, namely such components of the data flow chain as OTA, Channel Manager or PMS.

Online Travel Agency (OTA) is nothing more than a sales channel. It is an Internet platform where the hotel’s offer is published and which can be used at any time by potential customers. That includes both large and commonly known websites, such as Booking.com or Expedia, as well as much smaller, specialized sites, focusing solely on business or mountain hotels with SPA facilities or facilities attractive for golf lovers. Taking into account the fact that hotels cooperate with many such agencies, which allow them to reach broader and more varied groups of potential customers, it is necessary to have an adequate system in place, which makes day-to-day management easier. And that brings us to Channel Manager. In simplest terms it is a system allowing faster and more effective management of price plans for specific channels from the level of one control point, automatic bookings and sending information to OTA in real time regarding prices and the availability of rooms.

An extreme link of the data flow chain is in each case the Property Management System (PMS), that is an advanced system of managing a property. And even though each PMS offers slightly different functionalities, it can be argued that its main role is storage of information on hotel bookings, the current number of available rooms and accepting new bookings incoming via the Channel Manager or the sales department. PMS transfers the most recent data on the availability of rooms to a Channel Manager, which are then directed to all OTA connected with the Channel Manager and in case of a purchase made in one of the channels, PMS gets informed about this fact by the Channel Manager and enters the booking straight to the calendar. And despite the fact that a PMS is a key component of the automated multi-channel sales process, it also fulfils a variety of other functions. It is an everyday working tool for hoteliers, allows to manage information on guests, accounts and many other ongoing operations.

The evolution of PMS

Over the last few years PMS systems underwent a major evolution. They have gained many new functionalities, moved to the cloud and offer increasingly broad capabilities in terms of integration with other systems and tools. At first, they allowed only to execute the basic activities associated with booking management, check-ins and check-outs, allocation of rooms, availability management, as well as matters relating to invoicing. Nowadays, mainly due to integration with other systems and ever-changing expectations of customers, PMS have moved way beyond the hotel reception. They have become a key tools not only for managing a hotel facility and its revenues but also, which is vital in an era of increasing competitiveness, guest experience.

The best PMS available on the market allow effective service of hotel restaurants, banquet and conference facilities, parking lots and SPA. They allow efficient and flexible management of the housekeeping team, due to instant updates on mobile devices regarding guests leaving their rooms or the hotel, connection with other hotel systems in order to control heating and air conditioning, as well as management of switchboards, mini bars and pay TV in rooms.

Guest Experience and Revenue Management

What is especially important from the standpoint of hotel managers is undoubtedly the financial results, which are directly affected by the matters associated with guests opinions on the hotel. And even though it might be difficult to implement, modern PMS have a lot to offer in this area. One of the goals of implementing a Property Management System at a hotel is to increase the number of returning customers as well as the number of positive opinions on the facility. It can be achieved by proper understanding of the customer needs, gathering data on their likes and preferences, as well as communicating with them, not only during the booking process and their stay, but also during the phases preceding check-ins and check-outs. Usage of PMS and other innovative tools to individualize guest experience is a key factor influencing increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. It mostly concerns the young generation, which perfectly understands modern technologies, is willing to use them and share their insights and opinions on various aspects of life, including travel, with their communities. In order to improve sales results and at the same time improve guest experience, it is worthy to connect a PMS with the hotel CRM system in order to manage customer relationships and support the effectiveness of the offered loyalty programs. What is more, by “arming” reception with advanced data and analyses on guests, trends and behavioural patterns, as well as expenses and preferences we significantly increase the chances for an effective upsell or cross-sell, which is in consequence positively reflected in the hotel performance.

When selecting a PMS system the key factor is also the possibility for it to communicate with other systems, including mainly the system managing the channels (Channel Manger), hotel booking systems (Booking Engine or CRS) or systems optimizing the applied price policy (RMS). While communication with a Channel Manager or a Booking Engine is offered by an increasing number of PMS, the quality of such connection should be analysed before deciding upon the right solution. What is more, data synchronizations with a RMS is still a rarity for much too many PMS. What are the consequences of an improper selection of a PMS? A Property Management System which does not offer a two-way data synchronization will be able to deal with intercepting bookings but it will not be able to effectively transfer information on rooms and their availability to the Channel Manager and in consequence to the OTA. From the standpoint of managing revenues it is also important for a PMS to make all of the booking data available to a RMS, in order to allow them to properly recommend rates for the online sales channels. An incorrect decision may effectively ruin any plans associated with automation of hotel operations and improving its performance.

Ample opportunities of communication between a PMS and other systems are especially vital in the context of hotels with an average or large number of rooms and facilities, lacking their own sales departments and aimed towards attracting guests solely via the Internet. Effective management of revenues and price policy, in particular in case of larger facilities, is extremely troublesome and time consuming due to several constantly evolving factors. Without automated systems integrated with a central property management system taking a full advantage of the hotel’s potential is nearly impossible. What are the benefits of communication between PMS and RMS? By adding a Revenue Management System to the set of distribution tools of a hotel we can increase its revenue even by 9%, which was confirmed by a report published by Starfleet Research entitled “Harnessing the Power of Next – Generation Hospitality Revenue Management”.

Cooperation with many Online Travel Agencies (OTA) is on one hand an opportunity to reach a significant number of potential customers and on the other hand a risk of losing a part of the revenues in form of commissions for intermediaries. Advanced Channel Manager is a tool allowing to automate the omnichannel strategy, as well as the manager cockpit, offering a quick preview of key distribution channels and their performance. By skilfully modifying the applied sales strategy and changing the price policy one can more or less effectively encourage guests to use channels charging lower commission or promote direct bookings via the hotel’s website. While listing the benefits it is worth to also mention that connecting a PMS with a Channel Manager is tantamount to making the information on the number of available rooms available in real time. Benefits are two-fold in this case: it allows not only to increase sales opportunities but also to improve the positon in the OTA ranking. It is also worth noting that any cancellations are processed in real time and the vacated rooms are almost instantly available for potential customers.

What to look for when selecting a PMS system?

In order to take full advantage of the possibilities offered by the modern PMS systems, it is worthy to verify in detail their communication potential. The most advanced and thus the most efficient systems effectively connect with the Channel Manager, directlyor indirectly connect with the booking system (Booking Engine, CRS) and the RMS and offer two-way data synchronization. There are relatively few of those on the market, and thus an alternative solution might be to combine a PMS with a high quality Channel Manager , which will effectively handle communication with a Booking Engine and advanced price recommendations of the RMS.

In terms of the sphere of functionality, it is reasonable to also verify the possibilities of a specific system and the chances of supplementing it with additional modules. They may increase the benefits and optimize processes, which are currently operated ineffectively or operated fully manually by the reception employees. An effective PMS system is also the best data source, which may be used for broadly defined analytical purposes and also for ongoing reports regarding occupancy rates or the hotel’s performance. Such possibilities should always speak in favour of a specific solution.

The progressing digitalization carries not only a wide range of benefits but also various threats. One of the threats includes issues of correct storage of data concerning customers and their credit cards, which are transferred between the hotel systems. The applicable regulations require the hoteliers to fulfil a number of obligations within that scope and establish a system infrastructure that will comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. When choosing a PMS for a hotel, it should be mandatory to verify how the producer addresses the issue of PCI Compliance.

From the perspective of a hotel manager the matters associated with costs of implementing a system are especially vital. Price is undoubtedly a significant parameter and often a deciding factor influencing the final decision on selecting a specific solution but it should never be a sole criterion for the selection. PMS intended for small facilities are not overly complex and thus the costs associated with its usage may amount to a few hundreds PLN annually. The amounts are correspondingly higher for large facilities and often amount to tens of thousand of PLN. One should be aware of the fact that the system fee is not the only charge that a user is expected to pay – it can be significantly increased by fees charged for system support and troubleshooting.

See which PMS are integrated with the YieldPlanet Channel Manager.

Ummarking inactive mappings in Booking.com

Jan 30, 2019 | Channel Manager

Ummarking inactive mappings in Booking.com

A new advance has been developed in YieldPlanet’s Channel Manager – automatic unmapping of inactive rooms and rate plans in Booking.com. This development results in faster distribution and decreased traffic to Booking.com due to not sending any data to inactive rooms or rate plan.

Unmapping inactive rooms and rate plans in Booking.com means that YieldPlanet will no longer distribute any data to such combinations.

YieldPlanet will Booking.com mappings more fit when:

– Booking.com room is inactive

– Booking.com rate plan is inactive

– a combination of room and rate plan is inactive

– a room or rate plan is calculated according to internal Booking.com formulas and no parameters can be delivered to such room or rate plan.

– a single use rate is not active in Booking.com

– a rate plan is not supported via XML

Customers are notified via email on unmapping operation after a single mapping row has been affected.

This operation is safe, as unmapping inactive combinations is neutral from a customer’s point of view.

If you are our customer, please, verify Booking.com mappings within the Channel Manager tool. Please, expect similar advantages with more channels soon.

YieldPlanet at FITUR 2019

Jan 21, 2019 | Channel Manager, Revenue Management

YieldPlanet at FITUR 2019

This year we will be attending the most important International Tourism Fair that takes place in Spain, FITUR 2019. Our stand will be located in Hall 10 in the Fitur Know How & Export Area – STAND B17.

This year our team has prepared surprises for all the hoteliers who come by our stand. From raffles to special promotions for contracts closed during the fair.

On Wednesday, January 23rd and Thursday, January 24th, our representatives will be offering live demos of two of our systems: the Channel Manager and the Price Optimizer.

For more information on what will is scheduled on each day, please, check out our program below:

Wednesday 23rd:

We will be receiving visitors from 10:00 to 18:00 at our stand, offering demos of the YieldPlanet Channel Manager and YieldPlanet Price Optimizer.

If you do not know our solutions or have not used them for more than a year, we are convinced that you will be surprised to see the new integrations of our intelligent distribution tools.

Request a meeting or demo and we will attend you in a personalized manner in our stand:
To request an appointment fill in the form or email us.

At 17:30 we will raffle a one-year contract for free of the Channel Manager (Essential version – Up to 5 channels) to everyone who has requested information and who has the raffle tickets. Ask our representatives to learn more about the conditions of the this raffles.

* Raffle limited to 20 participants
* Ballots will be given to the first 20 to arrive between 17:00 to 17:30 in our stand.

Thursday 24:

We will be receiving visitors from 10:00 to 17:00 at our stand, offering demos of the YieldPlanet Channel Manager and YieldPlanet Price Optimizer.

At 17:30 we celebrating our yieldTonic Fitur 2019:

Have a Yieldtonic with us, while our Sales Managers, Roberto Sánchez and Tristán Cnudde present the main functionalities of our RMS Price Optimizer and the new characteristics of YieldPlanet’s Channel Manager.

Discover the Channel Manager’s new functionalities through our interactive presentation.

At 6:00 pm we will raffle among the attendees:

1. One year of free Channel Manager service (Essential version – Up to 5 channels)
2. 6 months of free Price Optimizer Start service with initial audit included.

Raffle limited to 20 participants
A ballot will be given to the first 20 to arrive from 5:00 p.m. until 5:30 p.m.

We hope to see you at FITUR 2019!

Manage each channel separately with the new feature of Channel Manager

Jan 8, 2019 | Channel Manager

Manage each channel separately with the new feature of Channel Manager

Revenue is what makes all the difference. Manage each channel separately.

Battles over banning rate parity clauses used by OTAs worldwide have been hot topic for several years. There were winners, hostages and bloodshed during rate parity battles in the past, but the legal landscape in 2018 is more than promising for hoteliers in more and more countries.

Saying goodbye to equal prices and inventory in OTAs raises fundamental question if the game is worth all those efforts. Do any hotels need OTAs selling cheaper or more expensive than others? YieldPlanet believes so, listening carefully to its customers, and is ready to support hoteliers with several tools to address that need.

Not only does channel manager offer connectivity to various channels, but also delivers multiple options to manage each channel separately.

YieldPlanet will support you in sending different rates and inventory to your channels, thus helping you achieve your revenue goals.

Do you need your channel manager to open or close selected channels or increase the rate when availability is low? Choose YieldPlanet’s Channel Manager to support you with that. This way, you can add for sale those channels that normally are not used for selling, in order to use them, for instance, only in post-season periods. This functionality also allows you to limit the number of rooms available within some of the channels or differentiate the number of rooms, so that particular channels have more than others. This way you can foster direct sales, for example, by increasing the number of rooms available in the hotel’s own Booking Engine.

Please, also meet our newborn feature of managing each channel separately that already works with your PMS. PMSs are not able to send info about the availability per channel, hence they have always overwritten the availability per channel that was set manually by the hotelier. So far, data management per partner at PMS wasn’t possible – now it has changed. With YieldPlanet’s Channel Manager now you can also make revenue decisions and, in parallel to your PMS, send lower or higher prices or more rooms to some OTAs.

Contact us here for more details about YieldPlanet’s solutions for hoteliers and tips on how you can drive your revenue using our tools.

Are GDSes a good opportunity for independent hotels?

Sep 24, 2018 | Channel Manager, Revenue Management

Are GDSes a good opportunity for independent hotels?

To successfully respond to the challenges posed by online travel agencies, hotels need to strengthen their direct distribution channels.

One major strategy to reduce a hotel’s dependence on OTAs is to pursue diversification of distribution and promotional channels. At most hotels, the prominent channels are OTAs, the hotel’s website and front desk, corporate relationships, and travel agents connected to the GDS whose users are largely corporate.

Global distribution systems remain an overlooked yet lucrative source of revenue for hoteliers. If the GDS network puts hotels in front of more than 600,000 travel agents worldwide and millions of corporate and leisure travelers, then why are these channels so often overlooked? Mainly, because many properties, especially small independent hotels, fail to realise the full extent of the potential benefit to be gained by exploiting these channels in the first place.

Hoteliers can see a boost by marketing through GDSes if they dissect and distribute their information in the right way. So, what is the right way?

The distribution side is easy: global chains are connected directly. Content is shipped to GDS. Simple.

What about independent hotels?
Well, they can use a Channel Manager, like YieldPlanet, which provides GDS connectivity. Live rates and availability are sent directly to the GDS and online booking websites through YieldPlanet. As soon as a reservation is made on the GDS, YieldPlanet’s Channel Manager instantly reduces inventory across all channels. Et voilà!

What also many independent hotels may not know is that there is a sales & marketing side to GDSes. This centers on taking ongoing GDS distribution and using it to actively generate revenue.

In order to sell and market themselves effectively, hotels need global account distribution managers, marketing specialists, and technology to put them on the international market. Global hotel chains have this. Independent hotels don’t.

Here is where GDSes come in. They offer global sales, marketing, and distribution through GDS connectivity, enabling smaller independent hotels to join the wider international market alongside the world’s top big-name hotel chains.

While the benefits are obvious, GDSes is not the answer for all properties. For maximum benefit costing the least required time & effort, we recommend global distribution systems to hotels, both chains and independent, with approximately 25 rooms or more and/or located in a popular travel destination.

The first video guide for Channel Manager

Sep 23, 2018 | Channel Manager

The first video guide for Channel Manager

#OccupancyBasedPricing

A useful guide to the secret revenue management corners of the YieldPlanet Channel Manager

How well do you know your “assistant” and are you sure that you use all his capabilities in full force? If you are at a loss for an answer, we will help you get to know each other better!

YieldPlanet has prepared a useful guide to the secret revenue management corners of the Channel Manager. We will show you how to simplify your work and teach you how to use different types of planning and making reservation modules. Start to learn the new with our tutorial videos and improve the service level and credibility of your hotel!

The videotutorial is available on our YouTube channel.

The first tutorial video from our workshop #Occupancy Based Pricing tells about 3 simple ways how to manage your prices in YieldPlanet Channel Manager system, and also answers the following questions:

How to create price lists designed to hold prices for the entire room?
How to input prices in a format based on the specific number of people occupying a room?
Which module can offer you unlimited freedom in inserting occupancy rates?

These and many other things are already on our YouTube channel. Do not miss the unique opportunity to get new knowledge on a way to perfection!

Learn, grow up and increase profits with yieldPlanet – watch the video right now and reach new horizons!

YieldPlanet x CanadaStays Integration

Jul 4, 2018 | Channel Manager, OTAs

YieldPlanet x CanadaStays Integration

YieldPlanet and Canada Stays is two-way integration which not only allows you to download reservations, but also deliver rates and allotments, and stay restrictions, such as minimum stay or CTA.

We are thrilled to announce that YieldPlanet has integrated with Canada Stays! This is a two-way integration which allows not only to download reservations but also to deliver rates, allotments and stay restrictions such as minimum stay or CTA.

Canada Stays is Canada’s largest vacation rental marketplace, with over 140,000 vacation rental properties in 11,000 destinations across Canada, the US, the Caribbean and South America.

Canada Stays sees 4 to 5.5 million page visits a year, providing a new opportunity to drive more Canadian travellers to your listings.

“This integration will enable the 15,000 properties using the YieldPlanet platform to seamlessly connect with millions of travelers who visit CanadaStays every year, allowing us to expand the number of vacation rental options available for our travelers,”
Nikki Stone, Head of Revenue Strategy.

Benefits of Listing with Canada Stays:

Increased exposure: By listing with CanadaStays, you also gain access to a growing network of distribution partners, including HomeAway, VRBO, Tripping and Cottage Life, at no extra cost.
Flexible booking options: Choose between instant booking or a 24-hour confirmation period.
Dedicated Account Managers: Maximize booking opportunities with the help of an in-house optimization team.
Secure Payments: You and your traveller are protected by a secure payment platform.

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