The main goal of revenue management is to achieve greater profitability for not only the rooms department, but for your entire integrated resort. Total profit takes understanding your business from top line revenue down to the expenses. A lot of analysis and effort goes into making this happen, 365 days a year, for everyone on your team. With all that has happened to our industry in the past two years, the job of revenue managers everywhere has changed. Transient and casino demand is back with much less lead times, but greater length of stays. Our costs to acquire business, and to just simply be in business, has increased. To say that our industry as a whole has changed is a gross understatement. Today there are many new things out of our control that affect our demand and our ability to drive the best business into our buildings. It starts with the pandemic with some people still not feeling comfortable with traveling, but now these issues have expanded to staffing shortages, supply chain issues, change in flight schedules, the war in Ukraine, discontinuation of stimulus checks and gas prices – just to name a few! These topics are top of mind to every revenue management professional. To address them we need to be nimble to create immediate pivoting in strategy. This all has an effect on demand. As our business is coming back with longer lead times, and the summer season is coming, we need to make sure that we are effectively embracing our new tasks to navigate our way through these times. Basically we are doing more revenue management work with less staff. In an article by Robert Cross of Revenue Analytics from May 17, 2020, he talks about how, “The post-COVID recovery will be erratic and spotty. Strategies will need to be changed on-the-fly. The scenario you had initially planned for might not happen. You’ll need to pivot fast to a more likely scenario.” Here are my recommendations on how to handle these new tasks that have come from the pandemic that are critical to our revenue strategies.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY ANGIE DOBNEY IN THE 2022 SUMMER EDITION OF GAMING & LEISURE MAGAZINE.