If you’re using spreadsheets for forecasting or annual budget planning, many of your documents most likely have an error in them.
Less room for error
Let’s face it: our forecasts are never exact. Most hoteliers would agree that a demand forecast is considered accurate if it is within 3% on either side, high or low. On top of that room for error, Excel is a deep and complicated program that can be highly susceptible to mistakes — it’s easy to change information, accidentally or intentionally.
In the hotel revenue management space, one extra zero or a misplaced decimal point can have a huge impact on a forecast or pricing decision.
A recent audit of Excel spreadsheets showed that nearly 90% of them contain serious errors, and that the average cell error rates (the ratio of cells with errors to all cells with formulas) is 5.2%. So, if you’re using spreadsheets for forecasting or annual budget planning, many of your documents most likely have an error in them.
With Excel, preparing and running the necessary reports can be extremely time consuming. And by the time you’re ready to analyze the data, it’s often already old. When you’re using Excel spreadsheets, the data is only as up to date as the last time you imported it from another application, such as your PMS.
More time for strategy
Excel offers a lot of capabilities and it will always have a place within hotel revenue strategy. But if you’re spending all your time in Excel, you’re simply compiling data. If you can move to a process where your data is already there and it’s up-to-date all the time, you can spend more time analyzing and building a strategy. An efficient strategy to increase hotel profitability is much more helpful than creating spreadsheets.
But, revenue strategy isn’t just for revenue teams — there are lots of people involved. For example, your revenue team helps your housekeeping manager to staff more efficiently and your marketing department to create the most effective promotions. As a revenue manager, you’re the first point of contact for asset managers and financial teams.
Outside of day-to-day analysis and pricing, a revenue strategy system will help you evaluate data you hadn’t considered before. A system will go beyond historical data and include datasets such as web activity, weather patterns, air traffic and ratings and review data. For example, imagine you had an influx of travelers shopping your hotel, adding their dates and selecting a room type, but not booking. Wouldn’t you want to investigate? An instant alert via an RMS dashboard or an email could mean the difference between profit and loss.
An RMS makes sense
Moving from Excel to an automated, cloud-based revenue management solution will immediately take your forecasting and pricing to the next level. Instead of crunching numbers and sweating over spreadsheets, you’ll be making more educated pricing decisions and increasing profits.
