Online travel management can be an intimidating process.  An organized system will help simplify this otherwise challenging task. Just follow these five basic steps:

1.  Exposure 

More and more consumers are utilizing dozens of popular online travel websites, not just 4 or 5 websites, as commonly misconstrued, to book your hotel online.  If the consumer cannot find your property on these sites, they cannot and will not book your hotel. 

If your hotel is in a competitive market, you must have a comprehensive strategy to expose your property on as many online sources as possible. 

Solution:
A. Have a property specific website that is professionally designed, marketed and reviewed on a monthly basis by the hotel’s management team. 
B. Work with as many third party travel websites as possible to ensure the hotel is exposed in as many online facets as possible on a domestic and global basis.

2.  Rate Parity

It is not uncommon, and often very necessary, for hotels in a competitive marketplace to be exposed on 10, 20, 30 or more online travel channels. It is critical to keep your rates in selling rate parity, across all channels, to protect the rate integrity of your hotel. If a consumer sees a different rate on every website, they will question the pricing and overall integrity of your hotel and that website. 

Solution:
A hotel must know the formula each online travel website uses to markup net rates.  Hoteliers must also manage their rates effectively to maximize their hotel’s rate integrity and online ADR, and for brand hotels, avoid non-compliance with Brand Best-Rate Guarantees.

3.  Yield Daily

When dealing with online travel sites, hotels have recently resisted yielding daily, because it has become a time-consuming and complex process. However, at the same time, the online marketplace to book hotel rooms has become more fluid recently.  With the boom of the internet, market changes occur much more rapidly than it has in the past.

Solution:
If you review your rates and booking trends daily, you will see a steady increase in your internet ADR and your overall ADR from all of your channels, including “traditional’ booking channels.  Hotels should review and yield daily and more often in competitive markets.
 

4.  Know Your Market Managers

When visiting an online travel site, how often do your customers go past “page 2” for a city search to book a room?  Trends show that most online customers do not look past page 2.

Solution:
Online travel sites have Market Managers that ultimately determine when and how your hotel shows up on their website. You should consider focusing on building your relationship with the market mangers at each website. To achieve the best positioning, your hotel needs to preferably show up on the first page for your city. The online marketing process is still a relationship business.

5.  Dedicated Staff – E-Commerce Specialist

Because of the intricacies of marketing a hotel online, medium and larger properties should consider having a person dedicated to selling their product online. Traditional sales managers are still necessary in dealing with traditional distribution methods, but the dominance of online travel has made it critical to dedicate resources to the online channels.

Solution:
Take the crunch.  Hire an in-house E-Commerce Specialist to focus their attentions on building your hotel’s online presence and revenues.  Their responsibilities would include web design and e-marketing, online travel channel management, monitoring rate parity, and seeking out new travel sites. This person would be integral to the revenue process and should provide the hotel team with weekly and monthly detailed production reports, exposure levels and current positioning/placement specifics. Smaller hotels can meet this staffing need, as a dual role within their team, by sharing some of the E-Commerce Specialist responsibilities among several key staff members. 

Online Travel Website Management is EZ:

Today’s hotel can obtain and manage increased internet exposure through hundreds of websites, as well as maintain accurate and competitive Rate Parity through the use of the EZ YIELD.COM channel management system. EZ YIELD.com™ provides the hotel the ability to Simultaneously Update Rates, Allotments and Inventory Restrictions on ALL of their Internet Wholesalers. 

1. Enter Date Range(s) to Update 
2. Enter GLOBAL Rate, Allotment and Inventory Restrictions 
3. Press YIELD NOW

Henry Danish, CEO and Co-Founder of EZ Yield.com stated that “the internet wholesaler industry, as it relates to hotel revenue management, is in dire need of yielding standardization.” EZ Yield.com has translated this need into a simple to use, yet technologically advanced, web-based application. “

About EZ Yield.com: 

EZ Yield.com provides Hoteliers a state of the art web-based yield management platform with the power to update Rates, Availability, Allotments, Cut-Off Dates, Blackout Dates, and Minimum Night Stays simultaneously across the “spectrum” of their “contracted” internet wholesalers for ALL their on line travel websites. 

The top 9 most common benefits as surveyed by EZ Yield hotels are: 

1. Typical time and labor cost savings of 40-50 hours per month per hotel.
2. Update all travel sites simultaneously --- availability, unavailability, rates, allotment, etc.
3. Capture your share of the 20% of internet business generated by small/medium sites.
4. Always remember to yield all your sites - avoid costly "lost revenue" opportunities.
5. Rate parity is a snap --- selling rate parity/net rate parity based on hotel's contracted website markups, roundings, and exceptions.
6. Helps insure your hotels keep within Brand "Best Rate Guarantee" guidelines.
7. Ability to Strategically Drive Room Revenue DIRECT to your hotel.
8. EZ Yield COMPANION allows 30 second SIMULTANEOUS view of current room inventory block, pickup and rates on your websites.
9. The EZ Yield system typically costs less than one room night, per month.