By: Ryan Moran - Director, Product
The new year brings new challenges. We’re all faced with the daunting tasks of growing revenues, hitting budgets, checking forecasts. The big question, corresponding fear and anxiety-laden answer:
Q: Where will this new revenue come from?
A: I don’t know...
(sigh)
We’ll figure it out.
Which all practically translates to: The revenue strategy team needs to work magic.
We know how this works. It’s stressful. But, in that challenge there is opportunity and it doesn’t require magic. New revenue is out there. You just have to know where to look. The HummingbirdPXM Platform and Third Party View is specifically designed to help you identify, target and convert new revenue opportunities.
At the property, you’re limited in your ability to create new revenue. You can’t manufacture demand. You don’t control Google search results. You don’t control a brand’s marketing budget or strategy. You can’t change the seasons.
One source of business that you can affect at the property level is agency/account business. And the one thing we know about this business is that it is booking outside the GDS at an escalating rate (see: link to previous blog). This is new revenue you can identify, target and capture. Right now customers are using Third Party View (and Third Party Insights previously) on the HummingbirdPXM Platform to do exactly this. They are identifying new agencies/account opportunities to target and convert. They are successfully creating new revenue.
Problem
We’re going to focus on one property and how they were able to use the HummingbirdPXM Platform, and Third Party View specifically, to address their challenges and turn those challenges into an opportunity to create new revenue.
Property Type: Full Service - Upper Upscale
Property Location: Midsize Suburban Market
Challenges:
Heavy reliance on a dwindling singular, top corporate account
New and growing competitive supply in the market
Lack of focused support from brand channels
Dependence on lower valued opaque and contract business
Solution
Step 1 - Shift reliance away from dwindling singular, top corporate account.
How achieved:
Using Third Party View, the property was able to identify other accounts where their competition was getting a better rate, and leverage that information for more valuable business from agencies/account
Using Third Party View, the property was able to identify accounts their competition was actualizing that they were not, providing targets for net new business.
Step 2 - Deal with increased competition, and access higher value demand.
How achieved:
Using Third Party View in conjunction with Optimization View, the property was able to identify periods of high GDS demand, and where they were also underperforming vs. their competition, and were able to run a GDS campaign which proved to be highly effective.
Using Third Party View, and list of accounts identified in Step 1, the property was able to provide their sales force with key business intelligence to leverage in negotiations with agencies or for RFP season.
Step 3 - Measure and adjust. Show positive ROI.
How achieved:
Using Third Party View, the property was able to measure the success of their GDS campaigns both for timing, frequency and amplitude. They were able to clearly identify where gains were made and not - repeat what worked; adjust what didn’t. Further, they were able to show ownership specific resource spend > revenue results measures.
Using Third Party View, and the ability to track results, the property was able to more efficiently deploy their sales force vs more potentially valuable accounts and with actualized business intelligence to use negotiations. The result was sales spend savings and profitability gains.
Result
Property realized ~70% YoY COPE Revenue Index change for agency handling top corporate account.
Overall, property realized +4% COPE Revenue Index growth in GDS channel performance.
Concurrently, property was able to make business case to get approval for hiring a new Business Travel Sales Manager.
Takeaway
The above is one, small example of how properties are turning the challenge of meeting revenue goals into an opportunity. Using the Hummingbird Platform, and Third Party View specifically, to their advantage in identifying new business and converting that to new revenue.