How The Dunhill Hotel Achieved Double-Digit Revenue Growth Twice
Independent hotels excel at creating unique guest experiences. Through exclusive products, knowledgeable staff and appeal across guest segments, these one-of-a-kind hotels have many competitive advantages over branded properties.
However, in saturated hotel markets like Charlotte, North Carolina, independents can struggle to capture guests’ attention amid complex marketing campaigns, brand-loyalty competition for bookings and attention through OTAs. It’s a business challenge that managers at The Dunhill Hotel in Uptown Charlotte frequently face. With 60 guest rooms and unique event space in an historic building, The Dunhill continues to appeal to discerning business and leisure guests. But as competition for guests heats up, The Dunhill also relies on a partnership with IDeaS Revenue Solutions to create an analytically driven strategy to maximize revenue. It’s a strategy that has helped the hotel achieve double-digit revenue growth – twice.
Complex Booking Environment Demands Better Channel Performance
According to Jason Edwards, revenue strategy consultant for The Dunhill, the challenge many independent properties face is that they don’t have the resources of a branded hotel to manage distribution across a complex array of booking channels.
“Independent hotels need a robust revenue management solution to help inform revenue strategy as well as ensure they maximize revenue across the distribution landscape,” said Edwards. “IDeaS is instrumental in helping us with this strategy.”
For John Beatty, general manager at The Dunhill, the IDeaS tool creates immense value internally, allowing him and other managers to use it daily for better business insights.
“My job is to make the property as successful as possible. The better we’re able to understand the data to help price our rooms appropriately, the more successful our company is going to be,” said Beatty. “IDeaS analyzes more information and makes sense out of that information better than any human possibly could.”
The Dunhill selected IDeaS G3 Revenue Management System (IDeaS G3 RMS) in 2017 after experiencing success with another IDeaS platform for several years. Among the many benefits of leveraging IDeaS for analytically optimized pricing decisions, The Dunhill almost immediately realized a return on their investment by better optimizing a normally quiet season for the property. What had traditionally been a slow period for the business ended up being one of the best performing summers they had seen based on year-over-year growth.
Heading into their busy season, IDeaS G3 RMS continued to produce significant results. Occupancy increased by 11 percentage points year-over-year and the hotel was able to balance ebbs and flows while still maximizing average daily rate. The hotel also reported the highest RevPAR they had ever experienced with an 11.3 percent increase year-over-year. This on top of similar results from previous years on another IDeaS platform.
IDeaS revenue management tools are built to serve both the daily user with drill-downs and granular data, and the executive with tailored visual reports and dashboards. Beatty and Edwards can each tap into IDeaS to instantly analyze how the hotel is performing in a way that makes the most sense to them.
“It speaks both of our languages, which is pretty remarkable,” said Beatty.
People, Process and Technology, Working Together
With a commitment to providing the industry’s best revenue management technology and advisory resources, IDeaS provided The Dunhill staff with a comprehensive training and implementation program to maximize success with their revenue management system. The staff, in turn, appreciates having continuous support from the IDeaS team who understands both the business and the technology.
“Our naturally talented team combined with this technical knowledge is able to make great revenue management decisions when using the IDeaS tool to its fullest extent,” said Beatty.
IDeaS creates value for the organization far beyond the revenue management role, too. It helps The Dunhill create a culture that embraces the data, insights and analytics provided by IDeaS technology. The hotel staff utilizes insights from the tool to guide sales and operations to determine everything from staffing housekeepers to quoting optimal group rates.
“The information IDeaS generates isn’t just relevant to revenue management,” said Beatty. “It’s relevant to the hotel operation itself, and it gives our managers the tools they need to accurately predict staffing needs and best manage the entire property.”