Best Hotel Revenue Management Systems (RMS)
Hotel revenue management systems (RMS), also known as yield management systems, use data analytics to help hoteliers maximize revenue and profitability. These solutions draw upon historical data and market data, as well as demand signals, to identify the best room rate for each respective channel listing and maintain real-time rate optimization. This automates an extremely time-consuming manual process and allows hoteliers to focus on other operational tasks. A hotel RMS helps hoteliers make intelligent pricing decisions and visualize complex data in a digestible format, improving revenue per available room (RevPAR) and budget forecasting. Some products also allow pricing to be compared against competitors for further insights. Strong reporting features enable data to be exported and shared with ease.
Hotel revenue management systems can be sold as a standalone solution or as an integration within hotel management software. Either way, they rely on integration with hotel management tools, such as channel management software and hotel reservations software to inform the predictive analytics and ensure all existing data is utilized to generate the pricing for each room and customer segment. By centralizing their operational data into one system, hoteliers can stay ahead of market demand and make informed sales decisions.
To qualify for inclusion in the Hotel Revenue Management Systems (RMS) category, a product must:
Best Hotel Revenue Management Systems (RMS) At A Glance
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- Overview
- Seller Details
Cloudbeds is the leading platform redefining the concept of PMS for the hospitality industry, serving tens of thousands of properties in more than 150 countries worldwide. Built from the ground up to
- Hospitality
- 81% Small-Business
- 19% Mid-Market
1,945 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Seller Details
Guesty is the all-in-one platform for hospitality businesses to automate and optimize every aspect of their operations. With purpose-built technology, industry-wide expertise, and an R&D team of 2
- Hospitality
- Real Estate
- 88% Small-Business
- 14% Mid-Market
5,103 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Seller Details
eZee FrontDesk is a general purpose hotel and motel software which is can be used as a hotel maintenance software, hotel reservations software, hotel management software, hotel billing software, hotel
- Hospitality
- 69% Small-Business
- 15% Enterprise
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- Seller Details
PriceLabs is a powerful revenue management & dynamic pricing platform for hospitality accommodations. Vacation rentals, hotels, aparthotels, RVs, and campgrounds use PriceLabs to optimize revenue,
- Hospitality
- Real Estate
- 95% Small-Business
- 5% Mid-Market
2,844 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Seller Details
IDeaS delivers the most powerful, analytically driven decisions through an automated, machine-learning revenue engine. Artificial intelligence, powered with forward market data and a hotel's own data,
- 67% Enterprise
- 33% Mid-Market
66 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Seller Details
With so many connected, moving parts, your hospitality operations platform needs to be remarkable. Mews Operations is a smart, powerful solution that puts you in control of reservation and revenue man
- Hospitality
- 63% Mid-Market
- 38% Small-Business
2,091 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Seller Details
Hotel management system with enquiry management, deposit handling, detailed guest history, multi folio guest accounts, etc.
- 70% Small-Business
- 30% Mid-Market
364 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Seller Details
AxisRooms Revenue Management System is a software that helps to review hotel's key performance indicators with action-oriented insights and achieve dynamic pricing based on demand, season, a day of th
- 100% Mid-Market
1,793 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Seller Details
HIA Accounting & ERP by Hotel Investor Apps is a full ERP designed especially for the hospitality industry and built on the Acumatica ERP platform. Hotel Investor Apps (HIA) offers one platform to
- 100% Small-Business
- Overview
- Seller Details
innRoad's award-winning property management system is trusted by thousands of independent hoteliers around the world. Our all-in-one software is specifically designed to save time, increase occupancy,
- Hospitality
- 90% Small-Business
- 10% Mid-Market
688 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Seller Details
A hospitality property management solution with automatic reports, notifications, optimal pricing recommendations, and more.
- 100% Small-Business
- Overview
- Seller Details
Hotelsilverlight is a cloud based property management solution.
- 50% Enterprise
- 50% Small-Business
404 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Seller Details
Inn-Flow is the fastest growing software platform in the hotel industry, because it’s a complete back-office management system with better insights and analytics. Founded in 2014, Inn-Flow was built f
- 100% Mid-Market
202 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Seller Details
Lighthouse (formerly OTA Insight) is a leading commercial platform for the travel & hospitality industry. We transform complexity into confidence by providing actionable market insights, business
- 100% Mid-Market
914 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Seller Details
myallocator gives you total control over your channels.
- 100% Small-Business
1,945 Twitter followers
Learn More About Hotel Revenue Management Systems (RMS)
What are Hotel Revenue Management Systems (RMS)?
Hotel revenue management systems (RMS), also known as yield management systems, allow hoteliers to maximize revenue and profitability. This revenue management solution utilizes historical data and market data to identify the optimal price for room rates based on room type. In addition, the RMS draws upon market trends for each channel listing and maintains real-time rate optimization. This eliminates the time-consuming manual process of market research and other operational tasks. RMS integrates with and aggregates data from channel managers, reservation systems, and booking engines. By centralizing hotel operational data into one system, hoteliers can stay ahead of market demand and make informed sales decisions.
What Types of Hotel Revenue Management Systems (RMS) Exist?
All-in-one software
An all-in-one software offers revenue management and reservation functionality that can be applied within other hotel applications. Hotels may choose this product to promote ease of use by placing performance highlights against occupancy percentage. All-in-one hotel RMS provides self-service functionality for managers to take advantage of pre-extracted data and improve decision making.
Integrated solutions
Many hotel properties have a management system already in place. Rather than changing the operating system, hoteliers have opted for a hotel RMS that integrates within a property or hotel management software. This hotel RMS is particularly favored by global hotel chains requiring system accessibility. Evaluating market trends for a hospitality portfolio of more than 200 properties can take time and effort. To ease this challenge, some solutions provide the user with an alert of multiple bookings for the same date booked within a short period. Once alerted, revenue managers can focus on pricing decisions and upselling the property.
What are the Common Features of Hotel Revenue Management Systems (RMS)?
Hotel RMS offers various features, specifically those designed for hotel chains and boutique hotels. The following are core features within different platforms that help increase hotel revenue:
Automated analytics: This feature offers automatic data extraction of regional and local market insights to measure demand and drive property prices. This software structure suits hotels focused on guest accounting records and accommodation inventory. Analyzing reports through market segments allows for a data-backed pricing strategy.
Dynamic pricing: Dynamic pricing is an automated pricing algorithm that updates the supply and demand of hotel rooms to multiple booking channels. This is a game changer, as it eliminates having to manually update prices, allowing the system to keep track of average room rates and adjust automatically.
Competitor tracking: Hotels can adjust their pricing strategy due to changes in competitor activity using this functionality. Analyzing competitor rates, room inventory, and event management assists in accurately identifying a designated hotel competitive set (compset). A well-established compset helps in understanding guest behavior and establishing guest needs.
Goal setting: With goal setting, hotels can develop revenue forecasts based on property performance reports and help identify goals. These hotel revenue management reports assist the team view sales statistics, productivity, and forecast weeks ahead through monitoring room revenue, cancellations, and total available room nights.
Cloud: Cloud-based revenue management platforms eliminate many of the difficulties and costs of traditional RMS. In addition, managing more than one hotel is completed with ease. With cloud capabilities, whether from a web browser or mobile application, hotel revenue management is available anytime.
What are the Benefits of Hotel Revenue Management Systems (RMS)?
Data consolidation: Every hotel program and management software produces massive amounts of data, from unveiling the details of bookings in market trend data, thus improving sales strategy, to multiproduct optimization for pricing consideration. Hotel RMS conducts data blending, which allows users to combine data from multiple sources into a functioning dataset.
Improved productivity: A cloud-based software allows reservation and sales teams to connect while working from various locations. An RMS helps put visualized data reports in a digestible format, easing the understanding of revenue per available room (RevPAR) and budget forecasting.
Who Uses Hotel Revenue Management Systems (RMS)?
Hoteliers: Hotel owners and managers can use an RMS to enhance portfolio profits for guest rooms and event space. As the hotel brand grows, a comprehensive suite of guest room revenue management can help sustain that growth. Lastly, hotel revenue managers will make confident decisions regarding hotel room-type offerings and channel distribution, thus maximizing profits.
Hospitality groups: The majority of hospitality investment groups are private equity firms that invest in hotels, resorts, and other lodging-related establishments. Hotel revenue management software will assist hospitality investment groups in monitoring market trends, market demands, and supply to help spot possible revenue enhancement scopes.
Rooms controllers: Several RMS keep track of no-shows and cancellations, which would be helpful to room controllers. Room controllers are responsible for organizing and coordinating reservations for the property, in addition to balancing the house. Both independent and hotel chains have room controllers that assist in reservation management. The room controller can adjust rates or offer discounts to drive confirmed bookings through the platform.
Challenges with Hotel Revenue Management Systems (RMS)
Hotel revenue management solutions can come with various challenges.
Accessibility: Hotel RMS are mainly sold as standalone products; however, some are integrations within hotel management software. Integrated solutions can experience communication errors regarding property room inventory, causing incorrect pricing of room rates. System users should monitor connections and ensure correct real-time information is processed and reported.
Market inaccuracy: It can take time to accurately identify the property's demand between online booking agencies and hotel search engines. This oversaturation of web-based market data may skew the reports and potentially interfere with pricing algorithms. If the hotel property receives a substantial amount of third-party web traffic, utilizing an RMS that filters in-house data from transferred data is critical.
Data dependency: The hotel industry strives to provide an optimal guest experience. Therefore, focusing too much on data and analytics can be problematic and distance the property from its initial goals. Data-driven decisions are vital to the property's success; however, hoteliers should always consider the experience being sold. Ignoring the market climate and personal influences of room pricing can potentially hinder profitability. Buyers should combine analytics with anecdotal business intelligence to help hoteliers maximize revenue and profitability.
How to Buy Hotel Revenue Management Systems (RMS)
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Hotel Revenue Management Systems (RMS)
RFIs and RFPs provide best practices that meet buyer requirements in the hospitality industry. For an independent or boutique hotel, purchasing a hotel RMS will pinpoint valuable business and make an immediate positive impact on revenue.
The business pain points might be related to all the manual work that must be completed, such as budget forecasting or aggregating data from other hotel technology. Buyers should create a criteria checklist that addresses these concerns. Also, hoteliers must determine the number of employees who will need to use this platform, which may require licenses.
As for hotel chains, creating a checklist of criteria for the mass market can help the team identify necessary and nice-to-have features. This detailed guide to the ideal hotel RMS should cover the present and future needs of the property. For example, acquiring an RMS for multiple or more extensive properties, such as resorts is vital for a hotel chain. Hoteliers want an RMS that grows alongside the company if there is a brand expansion or property renovation in the future.
Compare Hotel Revenue Management Systems (RMS) Products
Create a long list
When comparing hotel RMS, the first thing to identify is the critical functions required for the platform. For example, a yield management tool should be compatible with hotel chains and independent hotels. This tool may atomize the rates based on occupancy percentage. Many revenue management solutions feature an automated pricing recommendation tool that is based on booking activity. Yet, the overall must have for any hotel RMS is have machine learning capabilities that increases the hotel's profitability.
Create a short list
After identifying critical features for hotel revenue management software, evaluating qualified vendors is the next step. Narrowing down the list of contenders to at least three is preferred for proper evaluation. Cross-examining the long list requirements against the short list will assist in decision making. For example, do prospective revenue management solutions offer property management system integration?
Conduct demos
Conducting a software demonstration is an excellent opportunity to see how the different hotel RMS operate. Demos should be performed live by team members using the platform and who know the system algorithm. Ideally, the demonstration should illustrate the impact on the guest experience. Hotel owners may take this opportunity to evaluate different scenarios and how this affects distribution channels.
Selection of Hotel Revenue Management Systems (RMS)
Choose a selection team
Purchasing a hotel RMS directly affects the hotel's reputation and profitability. Therefore, the team responsible for selecting the revenue management software should include members from sales and marketing, finance, and guest relations. Including multiple parties in this selection process ensures overall company goals and viewpoints are achieved.
Negotiation
Once the team decides which hotel RMS are worth pursuing, vendor negotiations will take place. Negotiation happens between the buyer and vendors from the shortlist. Product features and functionality may overlap; therefore, product pricing and accessibility are crucial. Some hotel revenue management vendors will offer discounts, and others will offer packaged feature add-ons. One add-on may be the ability to move historical data from third-party systems to the vendor's platform. Before making a final decision, the buyer should actively negotiate, exploring all cost-saving avenues.
Final decision
The RMS should be decided based on the buyer's needs and the key performance indicators (KPIs). Hotel owners want a product that distributes optimal pricing and revenue management strategies, thus increasing RevPAR. Once all information is gathered regarding the revenue management solutions, a confident decision can be made, and the software may be purchased.