For what feels like the first time in a long time, there is a glimmer of hope for the return to “normal” and the eventual recovery of the hospitality industry. As cruise and airline stocks surge after upbeat news on a potential COVID-19 Vaccine early this morning Ian Sample Science editor at the guardian reports:
“An interim analysis released on Monday, and based on the first 95 patients with confirmed Covid infections, found the candidate vaccine has an efficacy of 94.5%. The company said it planned to apply to the US regulator, the Food and Drug Administration, for emergency-use authorisation in the coming weeks.”
In this blog post we offer an analysis of how the pandemic has affected the industry as well as the steps hoteliers and industry players need to take to move forward successfully in a post COVID world.
From ongoing border openings – and closings, and openings – and the disparity between the ways that countries are responding to the virus, the travel industry, as a whole, is chaotic and filled with a great deal of uncertainty.
To make a bad situation worse, travel demand has decreased dramatically, as a result hotels are competing for a much smaller pool of potential guests against hotels that would never have been in their pre-COVID comp set.
The combination of the inefficacy of traditional revenue managers with the chaos that the entire world is now experiencing, revenue managers are facing a huge crisis: the inability to understand and accurately forecast the future of their business – and the future of travel demand – in order to make appropriate business decisions and develop effective pricing strategy. The weight of the responsibility to recover the hospitality industry as a whole has fallen on the shoulders of revenue management software’s that are automated, dynamic, quick to analyze and react, and easy to use for all hoteliers everywhere.
The hotel revenue management technology sector is an area where the biggest impact of the pandemic can be seen in a very clear way. Traditional RM technology was reliant upon algorithms, most often based primarily on historical demand patterns as a basis for determining the best possible room rate, at any given time. Of course, because of the pandemic, revenue management systems solely reliant on historical data have now become obsolete, as hotels worldwide are experiencing unprecedented market conditions, which can’t be ignored or treated as a temporary blip.
Today, the pandemic is requiring less complex revenue management systems to shift towards real-time demand analytics, coming from a variety of important data sources. Pricepoint algorithms become more and more accurate over time as the artificial intelligence learns your hotel booking curves and customer behavior models. Pricepoint can work with or without historical data and will draw all necessary data from a variety of different sources. Current trends, events or weather need to be not only taken into account but also must be given the priority; that is why, with every single booking, modification, cancellation or just with the time passing by Pricepoint constantly updates and adjusts forecasts to make sure we understand your customers and the current situation.
The news of a safe and effective vaccine for the Corona Virus that could be rolled out to the public early next year could not have come sooner. For hoteliers we advise you to manage your payments to suppliers. Put in place an advanced revenue management system and pricing models to respond to market developments quickly. The recovery process for the travel industry will be complicated and lengthy but with time it will happen, make sure you have the tools that are necessary to assist you to have the quickest- most impactful recovery process.
Wyatt Niblett-Wilson, Marketing Coordinator