Stefan Wolf (Onyx Hospitality Group): HSMAI's mission is to be the leading source for sales, marketing and revenue management information and networking

TravelDailyNews: What is the role of HSMAI Thailand? How can HSMAI support the hospitality industry of Thailand?

Stefan Wolf: Thailand is part of the South East Asia Chapter of HSMAI and has been in place since the foundation of HSMAI Asia-Pacific 10 years ago. Our mission is to be the leading source for sales, marketing and revenue management information and networking, for professionals in tourism, travel and hospitality.

We organise educational luncheons and networking cocktails, to discuss the latest trends in the hospitality industry and provide insights that will help Thailand’s hospitality industry to generate more revenue.

HSMAI is offering two accreditations in Asia-Pacific, which are CRME (Certified Revenue Management Executive) and CHDM (Certified Hospitality Digital Marketer). Both are globally recognised and can be earned by passing an online exam or after taking an offline course.

TDN: How does the various political, security or financial crises affect hotel rates in Thailand?

S.W.: The response of the hospitality industry to any kind of crisis is similar in all markets and not isolated to Thailand. The experienced drop in demand due to a crisis leads to a reduction in prices, unfortunately. In economic theory, lower prices should increase the demand, but in crisis situations, the impact on demand is very limited, so a price reduction will just increase the loss of revenue and profitability. In addition, the post-crisis rate increase is not reaching the pre-crisis price levels, so the negative impact of this strategy is prolonged.

It may be difficult to implement in a highly competitive and oversupplied market, but the better strategy would be is to hold prices and reduce operating costs during a crisis. This would make the post crisis rate level starting point higher, and a financial recovery much quicker.

TDN: What is the role of the revenue manager? I suppose that most of the big hotel companies already have a job position for a revenue manager, but how about the small and medium-sized independent hotels?

S.W.: In Asia-Pacific, whilst there are properties that are independent, there are still others that are from smaller groups, which neither have a dedicated revenue management professional nor the expertise to clearly articulate what a revenue management professional is supposed to do.

A professionally trained revenue manager acts as catalyst to change the process of revenue generation from a first-come, first-served, occupancy-driven gut-feel approach to an analytical fact-based, demand-and-price optimisation strategy. The role is continually evolving with growing responsibilities and increasing complexity. Data analysis becomes more granular, culminating in a customer lifetime-value market of one approach, i.e. understanding the potential value of each and every consumer and offering individual price points, accordingly.

But even in its most basic form, a revenue management can make a difference. For instance, a revenue manager could make an important decision when such a case like this happens: suppose three days before guests’ arrival there is one room left to sell, will the reservation department take the next booking for one night at a high rate or decide to generate more revenue by declining this business and taking the next booking for three nights at a discounted rate?

TDN: Smaller hotels, if they have a revenue management policy, would just use a spreadsheet. How can technology help hoteliers to analyse data and take strategic decisions? How can a hotelier evaluate all the various revenue management systems that exist?

S.W.: Due to the increasing number of data variables, such as the different price sensitivities by geographic origin and channel booked, it becomes resource prohibitive to collect and analyse data manually, since it would take too much time, effort and people, and might not generate the incremental profit required. Automated revenue management systems can analyse huge amount of data and provide recommendations to optimise the generation of revenue.

As companies are at different stages of their revenue management culture evolution, a key element in the selection process of the RMS vendor is to determine if they understand the evolution process or do they just want to sell their product.

TDN: What are the future plans for HSMAI Thailand?

S.W.: HSMAI Thailand is having its annual all-member get-together in October, and then planning for the Digital Marketing Conference at Amari Watergate Bangkok on 17 November. The November event will be part of a series of that week’s Digital Marketing events, including the Digi Travel Conference, DIA Awards and the HSMAI Chief Marketing Officer roundtable.

The HSMAI Thailand Leadership Committee has also started to plan for 2016, when we would like to bring our events to other cities in Thailand, such as Pattaya, Phuket and Samui.

Stefan Wolf has more than 22 years of experience in the hospitality industry. He started his revenue management career with Marriott in Germany and Korea. At the InterContinental Hotels Group, he was part of a global taskforce developing an in-house Revenue Management Academy. He created a revenue management culture for Shangri-La Hotels & Resorts based in Hong Kong and was responsible for global RM strategies of the Jumeirah Group in Dubai.

He set up the revenue management infrastructure for Rocco Forte Hotels based in London and is now responsible for the revenue management and distribution strategy at the Onyx Hospitality Group in Bangkok.

sourced:traveldailynews.asia