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Anantara Hotels, Resorts & Spas is a luxury hotel brand, currently with 30 properties in operation in eight countries across Asia, the Indian Ocean, the Middle East and Africa. Anantara Hotels, Resorts & Spas is a luxury hotel brand, currently with 30 properties in operation in eight countries across Asia, the Indian Ocean, the Middle East and Africa. The group offers hospitality and indigenous destination experiences to travellers and its portfolio of luxury properties ranges from intimate facilities with fewer than 50 guest rooms to larger scale hotels and resorts with more than 400 guest rooms. Anantara’s parent company is Minor Hotel Group, an owner, operator and investor with its head office based in Bangkok, Thailand, and more than 100 hotels, resorts and serviced suites in operation in 14 countries across brands including Anantara, AVANI, Per AQUUM, Oaks and Elewana Collection. “The hotel landscape across the wider Asian region has undergone a period of growth in recent years,” said Bryan Bailey, group director of revenue & distribution, Minor Hotel Group. “As tourism and business travel has increased across key markets like Southeast Asia and the Middle East, so too has the number of hotel properties that exist. Nowadays it is not enough to simply open your doors for business and expect your property to fill up; all hoteliers must ensure they are offering the right rate at the right time to attract the right guest.” To ensure Anantara properties are able to maximise property revenue in a competitive market, the hotel group undertakes regular reviews of its commercial processes and monitors the industry for best practice management strategies and technology systems. This openness to innovation led Anantara to previously adopt the IDeaS Forecast Management System (FMS) to improve the business forecasts and help plan for levels of guest demand. “A hotel group that doesn’t have accurate forecasts of guest demand is operating blind. The ability to be able to set optimal hotel room pricing and plan staffing levels centres on the ability to be able to predict future occupancy levels,” said Bailey. Despite Anantara having a forecasting system in place, the group knew that to continue to attract the right guest to their hotels at the right price, they needed increased automation to drive efficiency and stay ahead of their competition. According to STR Global, The Asia-Pacific hotel industry opened 458 new hotels with 82,476 rooms in 2012 alone, all of which has increased pressure on local tour operators, hotels and resorts to ensure they have the right systems and offerings in place for their market. In Anantara’s case, a commitment to ensuring their hotel group had the right systems in place led them to identify that, although their forecasting system was providing accurate insights into predicted business demand, there was still a need to strengthen the systems and the approach to revenue management overall. “Under our previous approach to revenue management, we didn’t have a way of recommending the right price to have in the market for every given day. It was very time consuming – managers were taking time executing revenue management decisions rather than analysing and making recommendations,” noted Bailey. “Our revenue managers were spending time pressing buttons and inputting numbers, rather than analysing and looking at needs and opportunities and making recommendations for strategy and action.” Streamlined, more accurate pricing decisions Following an evaluation of relevant revenue management systems on the market, Anantara chose to implement IDeaS Pricing System (PS), to more effectively collect and analyse data from its hotels and help increase efficiency and accuracy around pricing decisions and getting these to market. Through adopting IDeaS PS, the 17 Anantara properties that migrated to the system have seen an average year on year RevPAR increase of 14.8%, along with significant growth in its average daily room revenue of 17.3%. The implementation of IDeaS PS began in late 2012 and was completed in June 2013. It included a staggered ‘go live’ rollout of 17 hotels across two months. Throughout the implementation and rollout phases, IDeaS worked with Anantara’s revenue management team to ensure that all hotels were configured properly and provided both virtual and hands-on support to relevant hotel commercial teams. As a result of IDeaS PS implementation, these commercial teams, which include the director of sales & marketing, finance and revenue managers and reservations, are able to focus more on their efforts in utilising their industry knowledge on analysis and decision making. “One of the key drivers behind implementing IDeaS PS was the ability to free up key members of our senior team, such as our revenue managers, from focusing so much of their time simply executing tasks to actually being able to spend time applying their market knowledge on proper analysis and to support critical hotel decision making,” said Bailey. “As a result of the IDeaS PS rollout the team has greater confidence that an optimised best available rate (BAR) is being recommended for them every day for the next year in the market. However, the system also requires our revenue managers to evaluate what the system knows about the business. Inputs need to be assessed so that the outputs are as accurate as they can be.” To ensure that forecasts, analysis and pricing decisions are streamlined and get to market accurately and quickly, IDeaS PS has been integrated with Anantara’s rate shopping tool. The IDeaS PS is also integrated into the hotel group’s PMS and central reservation platform, along with the rate distribution system. “It was important that any revenue management system we implemented work seamlessly in tandem with our other operating systems to ensure that once a pricing decision was made, it would get to market quickly and reach the people we wanted,” said Bailey. Increased revenue and operational efficiency Following the implementation of IDeaS PS, Anantara has experienced efficiency benefits across its properties. This has been achieved through automating Revenue Management practices and by minimising manual data entry tasks. “Employing IDeaS PS has enabled us to streamline the revenue management process, allowing our revenue managers to spend more time analysing data rather than manually manipulating spread sheets,” said Bailey. Through implementing IDeaS PS, Anantara has strengthened its approach to pricing, ensuring its properties are setting accurate daily room rates and getting these to market quickly, ultimately to help attract the right guest at the right price. In addition to significant increase in RevPAR and average daily room revenue, IDeaS PS has also helped Anantara properties increase their average daily room rate 15.7% and from a commercial operations perspective, IDeaS PS has provided the hotel group with an improved suite of management reports which are useful for many areas across the business including sales, marketing and operations. These reports, along with a more inclusive approach to revenue management, help build understanding and support for pricing decisions across the hotel group and support a sustainable revenue management culture within Anantara. “Revenue management is about the right price at the right time, which made working with a strong solutions provider like IDeaS a logical decision. As we work with IDeaS we know that they will evolve with our business, adapt quickly to changes in our business and deliver meaningful innovations to help us maximise revenues into the future,” added Bailey. Fast facts • Hotel – Anantara Hotels, Resorts & Spas • Locations – 30 properties in operation in eight countries across Asia, the Indian Ocean, the Middle East & Africa • Solution – Migration to IDeaS Pricing System from IDeaS Forecast Management System • Challenges – Time consuming rate management, data collection, price parity by channel • Results – 14.8% increase in RevPAR, 15.7% increase in ADR, 17.3% increase in average daily room revenue |
