Customer Success Story - Pandox RMC

About Pandox and Pandox RMC

pandox-hotels-testimonials Based in Sweden, Pandox specialises in property management and operator activities for a portfolio of 147 hotels in 15 countries. Pandox works with leading brands such as Radisson Blu and Crowne Plaza, and has also created several independent brands such as Hotel Berlin and Urban House Copenhagen. To take advantage of today’s digital distribution opportunities, Pandox has built the Revenue Management Centre (RMC), whose expertise serves all hotels Pandox operates.

When making pricing decisions, having a complete picture of the market with reliable, up-to-date information is a vital prerequisite. Finding, collecting and analysing this data manually is time-consuming and often still leaves questions unanswered. By using Rate Insight, the team at Pandox RMC has been able to slash time spent manually shopping, refine strategies and improve internal communication.

As Director of Revenue Management, Tobias Exner oversees Hotel Berlin, Berlin, Hotel Crowne Plaza Brussels - Le Palace, Radisson Blu Hotel Bremen and Radisson Blu Hotel Dortmund for Pandox RMC. He shared his experience using Rate Insight with us.

Clearly presented high-quality data

While our previous tool only provided outdated rates from the previous day, Rate Insight always supplies high-quality, up-to-date rate information for our properties and their compsets. To give an even better understanding of the market, the tool lets us create two compsets which we use to monitor direct and indirect competitors.

On the dashboard, Rate Insight offers great flexibility in terms of how data is displayed. For example, we can see competitors’ advance purchase rates and check their prices for multiple lengths of stay (LOS). Rate shoppers we worked with before would falsely show dates with LOS restrictions as sold out. In this case, we had to do extensive manual research and often make decisions based on assumptions. Thanks to Rate Insight we now get access to this information on the simple-to-read dashboard in just a few clicks.

"With Rate Insight, we can check our entire comp set's rates for a full year and see how our properties are doing in comparison."

A full market overview on demand

Our former rate shopper provided incomplete, outdated information, meaning we never had a full picture of our market to help us make well-informed decisions.

With Rate Insight, we can check our entire comp set's rates for a full year and see how our properties are doing in comparison. Outliers or periods where we are pricing too high or low are now very easy to spot. Also, if our strategy is to be the rate leader in the market, we can easily tell when we are achieving this target and where we need to update our rates.

The refresh function helps us stay up to date by showing us how rate changes impact the market in real-time. Always being just a click away from getting a real-time market overview has made our pricing decisions more strategic and dynamic.

Capitalising on trends during peak demand periods

When setting our rates, we keep a close eye on the events and fairs happening in our market. Using Rate Insight, we know when and how our compset adjusts their rates for these busy times or when they implement LOS restrictions. Being able to see these trends clearly helps us be more strategic with our pricing so we can always make the most of peak demand periods instead of leaving revenue on the table due to missing information.

"By moving with the times and always staying up to date with new changes in the market, OTA Insight has helped us adapt to and make the most of new challenges and opportunities."

Optimising online distribution

Before using Rate Insight, it was challenging to keep an overview of our properties’ rankings on all OTAs because even manual research did not always yield reliable results. Now, we can see our hotels’ current ranking on our online distribution channels and we immediately know if we have moved up or down. This is crucial for us because when our position goes down, we want to know right away so we can investigate and fix the issue.

The parity tab is also useful as it helps us quickly and efficiently identify rate disparity and resolve it. With new features like booking.basic creating both opportunities and challenges for us, the parity tab has proven quite useful.

Improved efficiency

While it is part of a revenue manager’s job to do research, our time should not be taken up by manually checking the next five to seven days every day to ensure our rates are in line with the market. By providing top-quality, current data at the click of a button, Rate Insight has helped us save countless hours of manual rate shopping. Now we have more time to focus on building our long-term strategies and testing new approaches to maximise our revenue.

"Always being just a click away from getting a real-time market overview has made our pricing decisions more strategic and dynamic."

Effective internal communication

Using Rate Insight has made it a lot easier to share information with the hotels we manage, especially while working remotely. When I am on a call with the hotel, I simply share my screen with Rate Insight open to give the team a visual of their hotel’s situation. We don’t have a pricing tool for all hotels, so especially for those properties, Rate Insight helps us get a quick understanding of the situation while we’re on the call.

Previously, I had to compile lengthy reports for our meetings and there would be a lot of back and forth which often still left some things unaddressed. Now, the Rate Insight tool provides the full picture in the literal sense of the word, so we can find and address issues more easily and answer our teams’ questions directly.

Some of our hotels also log in to Rate Insight on their own to stay up to date. If they have a question or spot a problem, they can reach out and we can handle it immediately, for example, if the price is too high or too low or they have discovered a case of rate disparity.

A strong partner in an ever-developing market

Since we started using Rate Insight, the tool - as well as OTA Insight as a company - we have developed a lot. By moving with the times and always staying up to date with new changes in the market, OTA Insight has helped us adapt to and make the most of new challenges and opportunities.

The tool is fast, efficient and presents the market insights we need to make well-informed, strategic revenue management and pricing decisions. On top of that, customer support is fantastic, and the price point is extremely reasonable. To anyone still sitting on the fence, I say, “Go for it and try it!"