When it comes to promoting your hotel business, Online Travel Agents (OTAs) provide you with the necessary boost. It may happen many times that your hotel rooms are not occupied and you lose a large portion of revenue which you earn from the hotel. This is the result of your mistakes in the matter of your hotel distribution strategy. DSHM – Hotel management college in Kolkata presents the mistakes and solution of it.
This is not only for your hotel but many hotels in the world may be suffering from this every day.
You can learn from the following 7 major mistakes which hoteliers make while executing a hotel distribution strategy:
Inventory distribution mistakes
In most of the cases, there are many OTA connections of the hoteliers for their hotels to get bookings from as many channels as possible. They handle the inventory and rate on these channels manually and this becomes an extremely time-consuming method. It is seen that these hoteliers are hesitant in adopting a new technology.
Solution: Use software that will automate all the inventory distribution operations. This will also let you get a one-stop control over all your connected channels. You will get instant inventory updates which will nullify your over bookings and relieve you from manually updating the inventory on every booking.
Not maintaining rate parity
Different commission for the bookings are charged by each OTA and it is one of the major reasons for your keeping separate price on each one. You shall see that few leading OTAs have devised the rate parity rule and this goes against your plan of keeping distinct rates on each OTA.
Solution: In order to please the OTAs, rate parity must be given importance over distinct traffic. If certain OTAs charge higher than the others, you can also negotiate to maintain the same rate. If you maintain rate parity, it gives a standard rate on all OTAs. This will send a positive image to your potential guests.
Not opening the future inventory
If you prepare your inventory for a limited time, this can result in loss of future booking opportunities. Many hoteliers make the same mistake. For example, if a guest searches the hotel room for an advanced date and availability of the room isn’t there. This may result in your revenue loss from future or advance bookings.
Solution: Plan distribution strategy for the next 365 days. It may happen that any guest can book with you in advance as a trip to most destinations is planned well in advance.
Not setting same room types on all hotel distribution channels
Let’s suppose that there are multiple OTAs with whom you are connected. There may be a different procedure of each OTA to register and so the number of bookings may vary. So the fact is that each channel will have a different room type listed which may lead to loss of bookings for absent room types.
Solution: On all your connected channels, start selling same room types or at least keep a track of the room types which you map on the channels. This will help you not to lose any more bookings. You can learn all the solutions in Dolphin School of Hotel Management – Renowned Hotel Management School in West Bengal
Not keeping flexible pricing
In your hotel, the number of guests may fluctuate at different times of the year. There may be a huge rush of guests sometimes and there may be no guests during any time period. This may happen if your hotel rate is not flexible based on your hotel’s occupancy which depends on seasons or the type of guests.
Solution: Software with a yield management module changing rates as per occupancy or seasons. You can derive the Best Available Retail Rate (BAR) for selling the correct room at the right price because of this.
Not keeping an eye on the competition
It is a big mistakes if you are not aware of the competition. If your potential customers are not able to know the tariff of competitors, they may not be attracted. The lack of any competition monitoring tool will result in you being deprived of competitive pricing and thereby of higher bookings.
Solution: A competition monitoring tool which helps you in getting insights on competitor tariff and rate forecasts for your hotel rooms around the year. As a result of this, you get the opportunity of earning the highest profit.
Not analyzing OTA performance
On the part of the hoteliers, a major mistakes is not considering reports or OTA performance while taking decisions. You need to avoid making decisions based on your instinct as they may often prove wrong. This mistakes also can effect on hotel business.
Solution: Reports made by software help in your business decision on selecting OTAs. They give you accurate statistics reports on bookings coming from different channels. Which promotions, rate types, room types, etc. work best for your hotel can also be decided by you.How to avoid these mistakes is taught in DSHM – a renowned hotel management school in West Bengal.