The previous two articles on Spa Revenue Management should have convinced you, that in order to generate more profit with this business unit, a more strategic approach will need to be implemented, comparable to the way revenue management is applied to hotel rooms. Key performance indicators have to be defined to help understand the patterns of demand and customer behavior. Now we will take a closer... 

The focus of hotel asset management has traditionally been on cost control. Reducing the operational or flexible costs on the hotel balance sheet is what used to determine the profitability of a hotel. Over the last few years, focus has shifted ! To control staff payroll, purchasing costs and overhead spending used to be the main components of the job of a hotel asset manager. With the rise of the... 

There seems a lot of disagreement if blogging is still effective in the days of micro-blogging sites like Twitter and age of social media like FaceBook. At Xotels we have been managing hotel blogs, and are achieving good results through a well thought out strategy. And this is the key for hotel internet marketing; you need a plan to get somewhere. We are managing various hotel blogs, for different... 

Our international hotel management portfolio of outsourced marketing and distribution is growing steadily. Our ‘Rent a Revenue Manager’ program was launched only last year, and we already have 15 properties under contract. The recent addition of the Hotel de Londres y de Ingleterra, a 4 star hotel in San Sebastian Spain, is very exciting to us. It will be a leading flagship property for Xotels. This... 

Having travelled a lot in the last month I have been observing some great differences in the levels with which hotels are looking for feedback from their guests. Some hotels simply do not seem to care, others have it a review score card implemented as a systematic part of their operations, few however really ask me for my opinion and make me feel they really care… With the trend of online... 

I would be rich by now if each time an hotelier told me “Revenue Management is great, but can’t be applied in my hotel”, I would have received a penny! I am heavily disappointed when I meet an hotelier and I hear this sentence, because it is absolutely wrong! Revenue Management is applicable to all kind of hotels: small, big, city, resort, independent, chain hotels, business or leisure hotels…... 

Everyone is focused on the integration of prices by Google in their maps and universal search results, and on how this will impact the hotel and travel distribution landscape. And they are right as it will have an important impact on direct sales for hotels. But there is something else going on that you need to be aware of for your hotel internet marketing strategy. FaceBook is becoming a hotel search... 

If OTA claim to bring incremental business, why do they advertise on hotel brand names? Shouldn’t they focus on destination searches instead? It seems the larger chains have convinced the OTA to refrain from this practice. However to independent hotels or hotel management groups they are not showing much consideration. This SEM hijacking or brand keyword robbery needs to stop. Consumers... 

Yet another hotel has been added to the Xotels group of independent hotels. Upon exceeding the budget with 26% in 2010 for the newly opened Townhouse design hotel in Maastricht, the Netherlands, the la Bergere Group decided to also outsource revenue management and distribution of the Hip Hotel St. Martenslane to the Xotels’ Hotel Management Group. This funky hotel is a great addition to... 

2011 will become the year of flash sales in travel. But not the way you think. Of course websites like SniqueAway, Group, VoyagePrive and Jetsetter will catch on. But after a while hoteliers will figure out these websites will only erode their value proposition and average room rate even further than OTA’s have done supposedly in the past. No flash sales will take a different route in hotel marketing. ...