Analysing data to improve how you do things has always been critical in businesses’ efforts to manage their revenues. And in today’s digital world it’s no less true. In fact, collating and analysing information is being ever improved on and refined thanks to smart digital-driven revenue management.

Take the hospitality industry as an example; the emergence of online travel agencies (OTAs) in the last few years has changed the entire landscape of how hotel rooms are searched for and booked by travellers. What does that mean for hotels themselves? They have to facilitate these changes and ensure their revenue management practises are up to the job in today’s digital world.

 

However, one of the advantages of the digital revolution for smaller, independent hotels appears to be that, thanks to their natural capacity to be more flexible and thus able to react to changing developments faster than chain-owned and/ or larger accommodation, they’re able to faster embrace the revenue-boosting opportunities of the Internet.

One such example is how boutique hotels have marketed themselves online by increasing their web footprint, taking advantage of the power of Internet search engines (such as Google). This involves harnessing search engine optimisation (SEO), which sees a business packing the content it publishes with keywords that will show up strongly in search engines thus rocketing the company’s ranking in search page results as potential customers/ clients look for businesses to facilitate their needs.

 

Another way such hotels are leveraging the opportunities offered by the online world is to make use of online hotel reservation systems. These software programmes ensure that visitors searching for a place to stay can book a room at a specific hotel on their own, without having to interact with hotel staff, thus proving a fast, highly convenient and effective reservation process for both the visitor and the hotel itself – the result for the latter being increased sales and efficiency savings too for the bottom line.

In conclusion then, by smartly embracing what the ever-evolving digital era of today has to offer – that is, what’s genuinely going to aid and enhance their business – a hotel can improve its revenue management. It’s all about striking that delicate balance of human intuition, SEO, data analytics and making use of a dedicated booking engine to gain and maintain a competitive edge over your rivals.