THE BIG PICTURE

While the focus of a hotel’s service design, business generating strategies and marketing spend was on room guests earlier, hoteliers are increasingly exploring revenue opportunities with ancillary departments

- PRANITA BHOSALE

Pre-pandemic, revenue generating strategies in hotels were focused around guestrooms. However, the changing spending pattern of domestic travellers has seen the emergence of newer revenue mapping trends. Hotel companies are exploring innovative ways to generate business from various ancillary sources, apart from rooms.

As hotels focus on fiscal recovery, Hotelier India speaks to a cross section of hospitality professionals on how they are planning a holistic revenue management strategy. We find out how they are employing TRevPAR metrics to measure the overall fiscal health of their properties by assessing the total revenue generated on a peravailable-room basis and how regularly monitoring these numbers can give a hotel an edge over its competitors.

How did the pandemic highlight the fallacy of focusing solelyon guest rooms for revenue generation?

Varun Chhibber, Complex GM, The Leela Ambience Gurugram Hotel & Residences and The Leela Ambience Convention Hotel: Pre-pandemic, the ancillary revenue departments were aptly named, since these served a secondary role to guestrooms. A large part of our service design, revenue generating strategies as well as marketing spend was focused on room guests. However, newer trends emerged in the postpandemic era. With business travel in general and international travel in particular on hold for over a year, more than half of our business was impacted. In this backdrop, the focus of hotels shifted to domestic leisure travel.