Sandman Hotel Group is one of Canada’s fastest-growing, family-owned hospitality companies, operating in 57 Canadian destinations, as well as three in the UK and one in the US.
The company contracted with Duetto in 2019, onboarding all its properties during COVID 2020. In total, 64 hotels with 11,461 rooms, are now live on Duetto.
During the lockdown, the Duetto Customer Success team trained the Sandman Hotel Group revenue team on Duetto and its Open Pricing methodology. The Duetto CS team provided scenarios on how Open Pricing would work during high and low-demand periods. Scenarios were tailored to relatable examples, such as how to apply Open Pricing for stay dates during the Montreal Grand Prix.
- 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
Today, Sandman Hotel Group makes full use of the entire Duetto Revenue Strategy Platform, with GameChanger for pricing, ScoreBoard for forecasting and reporting, and BlockBuster for group business optimization. Most properties run on autopilot, following an Open Pricing strategy.
Maximizing the Most Profitable Channels
Over the last year, the company has pushed for better distribution across all channels, especially direct channels. Open Pricing has played an important role
The Sandman Hotel Group's revenue strategy is now able to price dynamically based on the day of the week, segments, demand periods, channels, occupancy, and much more.
For example, Ling Tong, Assistant Director of Revenue Management, Sandman Hotel Group, uses Open Pricing to decrease discounts on high-demand dates. High-cost channels are also priced higher to shift demand to more profitable direct bookings.
“During high-demand dates, we price less profitable channels higher to direct bookings to more profitable channels,” confirmed Tong.
Strong Revenue Growth
During the early days of using Duetto, the revenue strategy at Sandman Hotel Group was all about driving occupancy because of lockdown restrictions. However, since mid-2022 that has changed.
“As restrictions lifted in Canada, we saw good ADR growth. The majority of our properties are on AutoPilot and some of the hotels are surprised to see how much Duetto is pushing our BAR rates. We’ve seen some record-breaking rates at a few of our hotels in 2022/2023 compared to pre-COVID years,” said Tong.
“We’re seeing good ADR overall at all properties, with BlockBuster allowing us to collaborate with hotel GMs and sales teams on group rates. On high-demand dates, we have seen Duetto push our rate up beyond what we would have previously pushed had we been managing rates,” Tong added.
The results speak for themselves. In the last 12 months, RevPAR* across the whole portfolio has increased by 38%.
*June 2022 to June 2023 compared with June 2021 to June 2022
Discover how Open Pricing is driving revenue at hotels running on Duetto. Check out the many case studies in our latest eBook, How Hotels Use Open Pricing to Optimize Revenue. Download now.