Hotel price optimization strategies are key

November 29, 2011 | Hotel Marketing

The fundamentals of supply and demand might be in the hotel industry’s favor, but without the proper price optimization strategy revenue managers will struggle to push rates, experts said during an HSMAI University webinar.

”The room demand is very, very strong. Room supply is not going to be an issue for the next couple of years, so I think pricing power should be back in the hotelier’s hands,” said Jan Freitag, VP of global development for STR, during the webinar “What are the Best Practices in Pricing and Price Optimization?”

“People are indeed traveling,” Freitag said. The U.S. hotel industry sold 1.05 billion roomnights through September - the largest number since STR began tracking data in the early 1980s.

Freitag said the upper end of the market is selling seven out of 10 rooms every night, which is a good indication there is pricing power in those segments. The lower-end of the chain-scale, however, still has room to grow, he said.

The problem is that pricing as a discipline is still not well understood, Freitag said.

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