LONDON, UK – September 10, 2013 – IDeaS Revenue Solutions, the leading provider of pricing and revenue management software, services and consulting, to the hospitality industry, today announced that Travelodge, the UK’s leading budget hotel company, has implemented a pioneering, centralised approach to revenue management using IDeaS’ state-of-the-art analytics and pricing recommendations.
Travelodge has been working with IDeaS to manage its revenue management needs for over 10 years, during which time the company has applied an increasingly sophisticated approach to revenue management. With leading revenue management technology and techniques provided by IDeaS in place, Travelodge is well positioned to capture revenue opportunities in all market segments and economic conditions.
As the practice of revenue management has evolved over the years, many hotel groups have chosen to place a revenue manager at each property, or in small regional clusters. However, today’s announcement means that Travelodge has re-engineered this traditional model, and shown how cutting-edge revenue management technology can enable hotel groups to have their revenue management needs effectively managed by a centralised team.
For a hotel chain of its size – with over 500 hotels throughout the UK, Ireland and Spain – Travelodge has introduced a pioneering revenue management structure, supported by just 20 centralised revenue managers, who are responsible for all hotels, representing 37,000 rooms.
In 2004, Travelodge implemented both the IDeaS Revenue Management System (RMS) in order to increase automation to support the continued growth of its business; and the IDeaS New Hotels Success Service Package (NHSSP), which allows each new Travelodge hotel to have a fully functioning revenue management system in place producing forecasts and automated decisions before it opens.
In 2010, Travelodge and IDeaS Consulting undertook an extensive business review to define how best to maximise revenue management performance for a portfolio that had since doubled in size. As a result, IDeaS helped Travelodge move to dynamic pricing by installing its Best Available Rate (BAR) module. Furthermore, Travelodge used IDeaS’ powerful Price Optimization Service to find the ideal rate spectrum for each hotel.
Finally, IDeaS helped Travelodge revise their revenue management Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), and delivered a series of user training programmes – conducted by IDeaS expert instructors through a blended mix of e-learning, onsite training and webinar training. An accompanying IDeaS RMS Certified Trainer Certification Programme provided the hotel chain with the knowledge and skills to train revenue mangers independently.
Commenting on these developments, Peter Manby, Revenue Director at Travelodge, said: “One of the best results of the training is the impact on the staff who are now trainers – the excitement and motivation they have derived from it is excellent.”
Paul van Meerendonk of IDeaS Consulting said: “We worked with Travelodge to revise its revenue management practices and the chain is now operating one of the most advanced centralised revenue management models we’ve seen. Travelodge’s revenue team is highly efficient, streamlined and productive – a great case study in industry best practice.”
“We want our hotel managers to focus on our customers, which is why we now have a central team of professional revenue managers in place to deliver the right pricing decisions for all our hotels. While centralised revenue management can help large chains capture the benefits of scale, it only works if people, processes and revenue management technology are all aligned – and it is for this reason that we continue to choose to partner with IDeaS, and why this pioneering approach works so well,” added Peter Manby.
In conjunction with their collaboration with IDeaS, Travelodge’s people, processes and technology are all working in harmony, and the chain can be confident it has the revenue management model and culture to match its ambitions.
