About Mid-Continent Hospitality

Mid-Continent Hospitality offers a broad range of hotel management and development services to property owners and investors. Their dedication to creating innovative, customised and efficient processes is what has attracted big-name partners such as Marriott International, Hilton Worldwide and InterContinental Hotel Group. Their portfolio currently includes over twenty properties around the United States, with several more slated to be added soon.

Recently, the company decided to handle all revenue management tasks internally. The goal was to create a streamlined reporting and data analysis process that would ensure each property reached its revenue potential. For this, they needed a way to unify reliable real-time data from different hotels and their respective systems, and present it in an actionable format.

We recently had a chat with Donna Paraliticci, Regional Director of Sales and Revenue Management at Mid-Continent Hospitality, to see how Spider helped her in this situation

Spider dramatically increases efficiency

Challenge

When the recovery phase began, Mid-Continent’s portfolio quickly tripled in size as more owners were keen to maximise their properties’ ROI. While the team gladly took on new hotels, this also brought challenges. For example, creating the daily RevPAK email was a time-consuming process. It often took the revenue staff until the afternoon to complete this overview for all properties, which meant that we lost critical time for making changes.

Solution

Spider provides a clean, comprehensive overview of all relevant property data in a well-arranged dashboard. That includes internal performance overviews as well as live market and competitor insights. This makes it much easier for the revenue team to create the RevPAK as well as other reports.

Results

• Preparation time for RevPAK goes from 30 minutes down to 5 minutes
• Daily overview reaches hotels in the early morning, allowing for immediate decision-making
• More time available for deeper performance analysis and strategising
  
  

Unifying data across brands and properties

Challenge

Each of the brands Mid-Content works with has its own standards, reporting processes and revenue management tools. This made it difficult for Donna and her team to access the same depth and quality of data from all hotels they were working with. On top of that, bringing the information from different systems into a standardised and actionable format was a time-consuming and error-prone task.

Solution

Spider integrates with the managed properties’ PMS, RMS, CRS and BI systems to pull all relevant data in real time. Among others, that includes pick-up and cancellation rates, OTB data as well as insights into lead time evolution and source market trends. Spider then consolidates this information in a standardised, user-friendly format.

Results

• Live access to the latest performance data and market developments for all properties
• Chance to compare and analyse results and opportunities across brands
• Ability to make well-informed revenue, sales and marketing decisions
  
  

Spider’s user-friendliness makes data easily accessible for all stakeholders

Challenge

In the past, many reports were complex and cumbersome. That often made it hard for sales, senior management and other teams outside the revenue management department to get the insights they needed from the data sets.

Solution

Spider is extremely easy to use and allows commercial and operations departments as well as regional management to get actionable insights in just a few clicks. It’s also flexible in the level of detail and depth it provides. This means users can choose a high-level overview of an entire brand or zoom in on a certain region or hotel. If needed, they can even drill all the way down to see a single reservation. 

The property level data helps local commercial and operations teams plan their staffing, promotions and purchasing. At the same time, higher level management benefit from a broader view in order to understand performance, develop company-wide strategies and communicate with owners and investors. 

Results

• Previously intimidating reports have become actionable and easy to understand
• The team digs deeper into the data because it’s fast, straightforward and provides valuable insights
• Communication between departments and with owners is more effective thanks to comprehensive yet visually appealing reports
  
  

A reliable partner in volatile times

After the pandemic, many previously accepted best practices no longer apply in the same way. That makes it all the more important to have a dependable revenue management tool to lean on:

“You lose money if you don’t use a tool like Spider, both in terms of labour hours and revenue opportunities. I encourage every hotelier to try it. It’s easy to learn and the support team is always quick to respond if you have questions. In short, Spider is the partner you need to make your hotel successful in these unpredictable times.”