Customer Spotlight:

Shimao Star Hotels Group

"The system design is very user friendly, and many functions have advanced intuitiveness, which helps us overcome unexpected blind spots in revenue management. We firmly believe that OTA Insight's Rate Insight is the best choice to help hotels increase their room revenue."

Chen Xingchun | Senior Manager of Revenue Management

About Shimao Star Hotels Group

shimao star hotels logo Shimao Star Hotel Group is an international hotel group jointly created by Shimao Group and Starwood Capital. It focuses on the fast-growing Chinese hotel market, and penetrates into areas with strong economic and tourism development, dominated by first-and second-tier cities to carry out hotel development, brand operation and asset management.

Shimao Star has 7 distinctive hotel brands, from high-end to mid-end, including Yurong, Maoyu, Shiyu, Maoyuju, Fanxiang, Ruixuan Shangpin and Ruixuan. These brands range from urban business hotels to resort hotels and apartments. In 2019, Shimao Star launched Fanxiang, a new lifestyle hotel brand tailored specifically for Chinese millennials. As of May 2021, 126 hotels have been operated and opened in 61 cities, including overseas, where 19 have been put into operation.

We sat down with Chen Xingchun, Senior Manager of Revenue Management who described how Rate Insight supplies real-time, accurate pricing data to improve revenue analysis and thus increase room revenue.

"After using Rate Insight, data collection time is greatly shortened, and the real-time accuracy of the data is guaranteed. We can spend more energy on how to accurately predict and accurately price."

A critical need for real-time pricing information

With hotel revenue management, in addition to considering your hotel’s own historical data and future bookings, understanding market intelligence is a very important part of the role. The most important thing to understand is changes in your competitors’ prices. This is because competitors’ pricing strategies implemented at different times can not only clearly reflect market trends, but also their operating conditions. For revenue managers, pricing changes themselves are an extremely important reference point and a cornerstone of decision-making. What's also worth noting is that when hotels are manually comparing prices of competitors, there is often a lot of work and the process is prone to errors.

First, it is necessary to obtain timely information on changes in competitors' pricing. If the revenue management staff can not get insight into the price updates of competitors in a timely manner, it will cause the hotel to miss opportunities to improve revenue performance. In the current Chinese hotel market, under the impact of the pandemic, the risk of uncertainty is quite high. For hoteliers, it is becoming more and more difficult to take opportunities to increase revenue - it is incomparable to before Covid-19.

Everyone hopes to seize business opportunities in a timely manner and maximise benefits but if the hotel does not have real-time data as their basis, it is difficult to establish a strong correlation between the hotel’s pricing and the actual market situation.

Additionally, it is necessary to ensure the accuracy of competitors' pricing changes. Having real-time prices is of the utmost importance. Revenue management requires very high data accuracy, because incorrect price updates will directly lead to inaccurate predictions of market conditions, which can damage revenue

"The user interface is clear, simple and easy to operate, and the solution’s display is concise and easy to understand, unlike many systems that are more obscure."

Timely and accurate data facilitating more efficient revenue management

From the perspective of our revenue work, Rate Insight has greatly improved work efficiency and reduced workload. In current market conditions, time is extremely valuable for revenue managers. At the moment, the responsibilities of hotel revenue managers are not only to collect data, analyse, and formulate strategies. There are many revenue managers who take care of other tasks, such as the work of the reservation department. Therefore it is very beneficial to have time to analyse and formulate strategies. After using Rate Insight, data collection time is greatly shortened, and the real-time accuracy of the data is guaranteed. We can spend more energy on how to accurately predict and accurately price.

Improved revenue analysis with granular data simplistically presented

In the rates tab, the solution displays a variety of price types (such as Best Flex, Lowest Rate, and third-party agency prices) in a refined yet simplistic sub-channel manner. Of course, it also contains more detailed data such as mobile prices, prices for different staying days, number of people, room types, and breakfast included/excluded. Our revenue management analysis benefits greatly from the accuracy and effectiveness of Rate Insight's data, and we are very satisfied with the granularity on offer.

"The customer service team is always very quick to respond. The customer service team is online 24 hours a day, and Chinese services are also provided... as far as customer service is concerned, we are totally satisfied."

A straightforward user interface combined with real-time price search and best in class customer service

The user interface is clear, simple and easy to operate, and the solution’s display is concise and easy to understand, unlike many systems that are more obscure. Some systems have very high requirements for personnel to be able to operate optimally - usually management experience is required. But Rate Insight is the most convenient and efficient system I have ever used. Income and reservation personnel can also get started and easily learn how to use the solution.

Some of the systems we have come into contact with before are very cumbersome to use and require more understanding of the functions. Our requirements for the system are that we want it to be user-friendly, that is, we should spend as little time as possible to complete more tasks - Rate Insight is the tool that fully meets our requirements.

Secondly, the price updates are very timely. The system supports real-time price search, and automatically updates the data daily, weekly, and monthly, which saves us a lot of time.

Finally, the customer service team is always very quick to respond. The customer service team is online 24 hours a day, and Chinese services are also provided. The reply speed is very fast, the problem is solved quickly and we can contact customer service through online chat tools. Unlike many other systems where you need to send an email and wait a long time. As far as customer service is concerned, we are totally satisfied.

A word to your peers

OTA Insight helps hotels keep abreast of market changes in a timely manner, enabling us to grasp data first-hand and gain insights into market trends in advance of competitors.

Secondly, the data is updated quickly and accurately, which provides high-quality information for decision making in revenue management.

Finally, the system design is very user friendly, and many functions have advanced intuitiveness, which helps us overcome many unexpected blind spots in revenue management. We firmly believe that OTA Insight's Rate Insight is the best choice to help hotels increase their room revenue.