The best way to ensure your hotel meets its sales goals in 2017 is to leverage high-demand periods and mitigate risk over low-demand timeframes in your market. Now is the time to review those demand periods, identifying booking trends that suggest either higher or lower than normal demand. It’s always best to put your strategies in place early in order to maximize revenue throughout the year. SynXis CR’s Daily Manager is a tool to help you deploy your strategy. Consider the questions below to help you create or define your revenue optimization strategy. For high-demand times and growing rates, consider the following:

• Is there sufficient demand to limit discounts?
• If you’re able to limit discounts without losing pace, can you use a stay restriction to drive longer lengths of stay and build surrounding days? (If you are not going to achieve a sellout, a length of stay restriction is likely to do more harm than good.)
• If that doesn’t slow demand, can you raise rates? (If you utilize any of these tactics, be sure to monitor pickup to ensure that you continue to progress towards sellout. If not, lessen or lift the restrictions.)

To prepare for times of low demand, consider the following:

• Make note of historically low-demand timeframes, such as slow seasons or holidays with negative impacts in your market
• In observing pickup in future months, make note of other dates or date ranges that pickup is well below trend
• Should you use packaging or promotions to drive interest and conversion over a particular time frame or days of week?
• Does it make sense for you to lower rate to increase conversion?
• Should you increase discounts? (Price your hotel’s offerings based on value position in the market; don’t undercut lower value hotels unnecessarily. Be careful when lowering rates and increasing discounts at the same time or discounts may be compounded – especially for rates that include a margin or commission.)

Why is your rate not bookable? If you encounter a situation where a rate is not bookable, here is a new troubleshooting tool to help you identify and resolve that situation: Rate Availability Troubleshooting Maximize your online distribution New distribution channels now available: American Tours International (ATI) American Tours distributes net rates for hotels primarily in North America (and secondarily in Europe) to global consumers, with a focus on Europe. Hotels will display on www.americantours.com. An agreement between your hotel and American Tours International is required. Contact Nick Hentschel at American Tours International at nick.hentschel@americantours.com to sign an agreement. Please contact your Sabre account manager further information. Reserve Direct Reserve Direct builds, services, and sells unique services to the world. Reserve Direct’s target hotel market and booking audience market is the United States, in addition to Canada, the UK and South America. A commercial agreement between your hotel and Reserve Direct is required. The interface is now live and accepting implementations. Hotels may display on a variety of websites based on the hotel’s location. Please contact your Sabre account manager further information, and find additional participation details on Sabre Hospitality University. Visit www.reservedirect.com for further information. Seekda Seekda is a metasearch site distributing publicly-available retail rates. Seekda allows hotels to manage their own campaigns via their extranet, or Seekda can manage campaigns on behalf of hotels. The hotel will display on Google, TripAdvisor, Trivago, Kayak, Swoodoo, Checkfelix, Skyscanner, Wego, Hotellook, Idealo, Momondo (coming soon), and HomeToGo (coming soon). A commercial agreement between your hotel and Seekda is required. Contact sales@seekda.com to sign an agreement, and contact your Sabre account manager further information. TravelBrands TravelBrands distributes net rates for global hotels to consumers in Canada. The interface is live, but implementations need to be coordinated and prioritized by TravelBrands due to some resource constraints on their side. Hotels will display on www.sunquest.ca, www.redtag.ca, www.itravel.ca, www.flights.ca, Intair Vacations and other sites. A commercial agreement between your hotel and Travel Brands is required. Contact Elvi Cal at TravelBrands, elvi.cal@travelbrands.com, to sign an agreement. Contact your Sabre account manager further information. Source: sabre