The feature story I’m proudest of at Skift (so far) is The New Science of Hotel Pricing.
While reporting, I learned that hotel pricing used to be guided by gut instinct and an obession with occupancy. A “putting heads in beds” mentality left money on the table.
Today operators are changing how they run their businesses to prioritize bottom-line profitability.
→ Hotels are shifting focus from occupancy rates to total guest value
→ Hotels are tracking everything from airline bookings to pickleball court reservations
→ Revenue managers are morphing from individuals crunching Excel spreadsheets to commercial strategy leaders leading cross-team collaboration
Change is urgent. Hotel pricing power and profitability has generally weakened since pre-pandemic times, except on the luxury end (to generalize broadly). So companies need to get smarter about pricing.
Special shout-outs to: HSMAI, Brian Hicks, Michael Morton, Jan Freitag, Lynn Zwibak, Sherri Kimes, Vikram Pradhan, C. Patrick Scholes, Katie Moro, Fritz Müller, Kelly McGuire, Klaus Kohlmayr, and Alex Zoghlin.
And thanks for the helpful insights over the course of my reporting from Cindy Estis Green, Chris Silcock, Ravi Mehrotra, Michelle Russo, Mary Oliver, Scott Strickland, Drew Pinto, Robin Gilbert-Jones, Christina Deeny, Dorothy Dowling, Jolie Fleming, Zach Sorenson, Haley Luther, Sarah McCay Tams, Shawn K Jereb, Nicole Di Maio-Kennedy, and Michael Frenkel.
