Anyone who has been in the hospitality industry can attest, we have more data at our fingertips than ever before;

That’s a good thing, right?  But have you ever stopped and asked yourself, has our behavior changed based upon this new access to data?  Do I really know more than I used to?  Or, do I measure the same KPI’s and respond in the same way I always have?

During 2014, I have been focused on understanding hoteliers use and needs from data, and it has been eye opening.  With only a few exceptions, nearly everyone I have interviewed has admitted that: 

1) they don’t feel like they do a good job of capturing and digesting data, especially across multiple data siloes or functional departments/systems, and

2) they know they are leaving business on the table, because they aren’t effecting incremental improvements through data-driven insight.

So…Where to begin?

Let’s start with what should be your most profitable channel:  your booking engine.

The standard metrics are easy to gather:  How many looks do I get?  How is my conversion?  What ADR and LOS and booking window am I driving in this channel versus others?  It is essential to know these metrics and how your performance compares historically.  Everyone knows that, and everyone does that.

But… How does your booking engine performance compare to your competitor across the street?  How does it compare to all the hotels in your market or region? You have an X% look-to-book ratio, up from Y% last year.  Congratulations!  But, is X% good?

In my opinion, this is where the business intelligence market has under-delivered: on the basic comparative insight.  Industry benchmarks, including Google Analytics benchmarks, are generic numbers across an entire category (“All Hotels and Accommodations” or “Travel”). 

But we all know that your hotel’s competitive set is a lot more specific than that.  Conversion metrics for Vegas are different than Omaha’s.  Traffic type breakdown for a resort is different than an airport or highway hotel.

And yes, I did say we have more data than ever before, so why would you need more?  Sabre’s RezTrack business intelligence report is now giving you more…but more of what you don’t have anywhere else:  Is X% good? 

For all the metrics that RezTrack captures:  Look-to-book, visitor-to-look, ADR, revenue, etc. and across all the dimensions captured:  device (mobile, tablet, desktop), traffic type, booking window, social, and meta, you can now compare your booking engine performance versus a user-defined list (that means you select similar properties to compare against) of comparable hotels’ performance.

View a sample RezTrack report.

Think of the insight, action and performance improvement you can drive!  All of a sudden you’ll be able to see that similar properties typically see 5% of their bookings from mobile devices, and 25% of their traffic from a referral relationship with TripAdvisor. 

And if you hadn’t focused on either of those opportunities before, you could be leaving money on the table.  (And you may not have even known it!)

Want to see how similar properties are performing? We can show you!  Reach out to your Sabre Hospitality Account Manager with questions or ask for a demo.

Bruce Hyatt is Vice President, Business Intelligence & Analytics for Sabre Hospitality Solutions. He can be reached at Bruce.Hyatt@sabre.com.