Increasing revenue per vacant room is the toughest task in the hospitality industry. In order to increase hotel profitability, tried and tested solutions are put in place by the combined forces of the management and staff. No wonder some hotels have strict policies to ensure smooth running of daily operations.

It will be fair to say that the primary goal of every hotel owner and operator is to boost a business’s bottomline. This requires a higher focus on costs to increase hotel revenues. If one goes by the rule book, there can be only two ways to draw more business.
* Slash prices such that the rates are cheaper than those of competitors
* Offer irresistible, compelling, or completely unique services that can entice the target customer bases

The prior cannot always be an option. Of course it will help sell a few rooms, but this strategy cannot be implemented on a daily basis. Otherwise hotel revenues get lowered due to constant low rates. Essentially, economics says that low prices lead to less demand in the long run! Moreover, a traveler pitches money exclusively on value.

So how do we go about adding value to our hotel inventory or service? This is where the second factor steps in. One can simply create or promote special deals through rate intelligence. A package is a smart way of masking the actual room rate. Besides, a hotelier would always have to understand and employ management tactics to drive hotel revenue higher up; this can be done by monitoring and adjusting rates as per fluctuations within the current and future occupancy demand. A hotel can predict this data by investing in market share reports prepared by research firms for a genuine business insight. Besides, they have to apply a robust revenue management strategy for guaranteed hotel’s profitability.

Hotel marketing intelligence revolves around online travel agencies. These OTAs can boost the revenue by smartly identifying the target market. But they charge a sizable amount; this might help increase occupancy as well as impact the bottom line. A better workaround with guaranteed results is a rate intelligence tool. It renders a competitive rate analysis through powerful application programming interfaces that ultimately help to build a two-way connectivity between OTAs and hotel rates, through systematic channel management.

Therefore, as a part of a hotel’s marketing intelligence, channel management can help you yield up prices during high demand. At low demand junctures, channels can be used to drive the occupancy rates up. Hence, obtaining an optimized hotel listing is important. When done through a dynamic pricing approach, best adjusted prices can be obtained. This is as per demand and occupancy, which eventually lead to the best highest possible hotel profitability figures.