Blog
By: Sadie Garside, Manager, Client Engagement
Finally, (mostly) all of my RFPs have been submitted, resubmitted, and finalized. The rates were built, booking links sent to clients, and I’m just waiting to watch my room nights trickle in. I’ll be the first one to jump on the HummingbirdPXM platform when our January data is released to see how everything is actualizing and make sure I can answer any questions that come up from management, ownership, or my team.
When the data is released, I want to confirm that my accounts are shifting in line with our hotel’s goals for 2020. As a revenue strategy team, we decided to focus on growing weekend business for both the Promotion and Rack/BAR categories and, where we can, shift away from lower rated Government business. We saw higher rated COPE ADR business in our Rack/BAR and Promotion competitive sets for these rate categories, so we know there is business in the market. By filtering agencies that have grown at my property in weekend Rack/BAR and Promotion revenue in Third Party View, I’m able to track and graph trends (see chart) across all channels. A lot of the growth from these agencies is driven by a 5% ADR growth on the weekends which is exactly what we were targeting. So far, I have a great story to report back to my team with multiple specific agencies that we have targeted very effectively.
After looking at the big picture, I always dig into my accounts with the most revenue growth and decline for the most recent month to understand what’s driving our changes on a more granular level. To identify my top three growth accounts, I go to Third Party View. One of these accounts has had a lot of growth at my property but has declined in the benchmark. By clicking on the IATA, I see that this change was driven by 15% growth in the Corporate rate category. I can see the associated accounts right within the account page in this tool and notice this was a new corporate account I negotiated this year. The benchmark has seen a decline in room nights for the Corporate rate category, so we seem to be shifting share really well. I’ll take this as a win for my team.
For those accounts that had the most decline in January, I want to figure out what’s going on. Our biggest decline came from an IATA that books a much lower rate in the market. Within the agency profile, I check to see if I recognize the associated account. I do: we chose to offer a higher rate for this corporate account this year, and our bid was declined. My team and I went back and forth on this decision, but we noticed within Optimization View that our optimal ADR for Rack/BAR business was about 6% higher and was getting displaced by lower rated Corporate business. I notice that the benchmark is getting more volume from this agency, but the rate is definitely below what we were targeting. I download the pdf version of this account to share with my DOS; I know I will be asked about this decline later, and the pdf of the IATA is the perfect tool to highlight my findings and back up our decision to let this account go.
Now that I’ve found some great talking points around the agency production in January, I shift my focus to prepping for future sales calls. I filter the total agency data in Third Party View to American Express agencies so I can get a full picture of their production before I head to Phoenix to visit the call center. I graph the trends for a trailing 12 months for all AmEx agencies and notice our revenue index for weekend business has declined by 3%. I switch my view to look at weekend production by month; this way, I can figure out which months had the greatest weekend revenue decline. In this case, the summer months stayed flat in the benchmark on weekends but declined at my property. When heading out to the AmEx call centers, I can focus my pitch around summer vacations based on this information. I will also work with my revenue and marketing team to create a promotion that focuses on summer weekends. I note this to bring up during our next revenue strategy meeting.
The end of RFP season does not mean it’s time to slow down for Business Travel Sales Managers, but instead it’s time to manage and maintain the accounts we’ve worked so hard to obtain. A lot of time is spent evaluating business that’s coming in and justifying decisions we made during RFP season, but a lot less time is spent doing this when you have the right tools supporting you. A General Manager or Director of Sales can ask questions about your account production at any minute, so make sure you fully understand what’s going on with these accounts and can easily find out detailed information down to the account, rate category, and channel level.
