Heure Bleue Palais is set in a beautifully converted Moroccan riad in the port city of Essaouira. This five-star hotel, part of the Relais & Châteaux collection, offers 33 unique rooms and suites, all overlooking the traditional courtyard patio and garden.
Opened as a hotel in 2004 after extensive renovation, Heure Bleue also offers a traditional Moroccan hammam and spa, an outdoor pool overlooking the medina and ocean, and an a la carte restaurant and bar. Other facilities include a billiards room and cinema room.
This blog is an excerpt from our latest special report, How Hotels Use Open Pricing to Optimize Revenue. Download your free copy here: https://www.duettocloud.com/special-reports/how-hotels-use-open-pricing-to-optimize-revenue
As a boutique hotel with limited rooms to sell, optimizing rates for each room type and night is vital to the hotel’s success.
Automating Revenue
In 2022, the hotel’s general manager, Eric Molle, decided it was time to move away from pricing on BAR – Best Available Rate – and move to a more dynamic and automated way of optimizing rooms revenue.
Duetto was recommended to Molle by a member of the Online Distribution, Yield and Project Management team at Relais & Châteaux. The implementation project was led by Jihane Zalim, Revenue Manager & Front Office Assistant Manager at Heure Bleue.
“We were looking to maximize our revenue efficiently and rapidly, and work on our opportunities lost to OTAs,” said Molle. “Duetto changed all that for the better.”
Molle admits that adapting the team’s mindset to Duetto’s Open Pricing methodology was challenging in the beginning, but within four months of going live with the system, the results were speaking for themselves.
“We had to change our mindset and strategy. The Duetto team made it easy to understand and implement the new tools. Now, we run revenue on AutoPilot,” he said.
Today, Molle and the team love working with Open Pricing and the results are really positive. Not only is rooms revenue up, but the hotel has also seen an increase in demand for its ancillary services and F&B. Year-on-year, average daily rates (ADR) are up 37%, RevPAR has jumped 115%, and occupancy is up 29%.
“Open Pricing has helped us attract a more interesting clientele that is willing to spend more on other services provided by the hotel and thus it helped us to adjust the pricing for our spa services and restaurant,” Molle explained.
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