About Sun International

Sun International is a South African hotel chain and gaming group operating a diverse portfolio of leisure and corporate properties, including world-class five-star hotels, modern casinos, and some of the world's finest premier resorts.

From The Palace of The Lost City at Sun City and Time Square in Pretoria to The Table Bay hotel in Cape Town, Sun International has created iconic destinations, differentiating their properties through architecture, service, experience, and entertainment offerings.

During the latter stages of the COVID pandemic, OTA Insight became a crucial tool to understand the evolving competitive landscape. It also helped to consolidate their revenue management tools into one platform, streamline their workflow, and reduce the number of systems they had to manage, and the significant costs associated with those.

We caught up with Natalie Moore, Revenue Manager at Sun International, to discuss how Rate Insight and Market Insight have enabled her and her team to better understand the market, and target new opportunities.

Ensuring accurate market benchmarking

Challenge

Sun International operates a diverse range of properties, with different segments and offerings. Managing the distinct characteristics and challenges of each property can be complex, especially in terms of catering to various market segments such as leisure, corporate, conferencing, and gaming.

Previous systems were always benchmarking on the entry-level room types. Once one or two hotels had sold out their entry-level rooms, then they found they were pegging their rates against higher room categories.

Solution

Rate Insight allows the revenue team to efficiently compare their performance using different rate types, ranging from room-only to bed-and-breakfast options. This is especially beneficial for their city-based hotels, as Rate Insight helps them track their competitiveness within their market segment.

The events calendar provides insights into potential peak market periods, while the Market Insight heat map highlights areas with high demand, current rates, and market occupancy trends. Armed with this information, they can adjust their rates to better capture demand.

Results

• Accurately benchmark against the right rate and room types
• Simplified the information gathering process, speeding up the time to insight and decision.

Solving distribution challenges

Challenge

Sun International encountered issues with metasearch engines and OTAs, specifically related to rate discrepancies and lack of accountability, where some hotels were totally out of parity due to some channels displaying net rates and others displaying selling rates. Solving these issues also takes up an inordinate amount of time; time which could be better spent on capturing new business.

Solution

Using Rate Insight significantly reduces the time spent on searching OTAs and metasearch engines. By spending just half an hour on Rate Insight each morning, the revenue team at Sun International can gain a comprehensive understanding of the market.

In Rate Insight, rates are displayed as selling rates so you know that you are making direct comparisons. At each property, Rate Insight is utilized daily, transforming what used to be a 3-hour task into a mere 30-minute job.

Results

• Immediate insights on one screen
• No time lost doing manual searches

Reallocate distribution costs to digital marketing spend

Challenge

The market behaviour has evolved from what it was pre-COVID, to during the pandemic, and post-COVID. The company aimed to boost direct bookings, which are more cost-effective than OTAs. However, predicting incoming business was challenging due to shifts in traditional supply markets caused by the pandemic. While changing their booking engine helped with the booking experience, they wanted to drive more direct traffic. 

Solution

Market Insight helps revenue managers quickly identify demand trends and market events. This streamlined decision-making and reduced the time required to gather and analyze market information. The international sales and digital marketing managers at the company also utilize OTA Insight's Market Insight. They have deactivated some OTAs for their properties, reallocating commission funds to the digital marketing team. The team uses market data and booking engine information to target paid media.

For instance, if there is high interest from Saudi Arabia, they increase their paid media spend and focus on that region. This targeted approach enables the company to concentrate on countries that are actively booking while reducing their cost of sales to OTAs. 

Results

• Reduction in revenue lost to commissions by closing off distribution to OTAs and driving more direct bookings.
• Reallocate those funds to paid media in order to target customers that are looking to book.
• Spot new opportunities from source markets that have not traditionally supplied business

Better alignment and collaboration

For Natalie, Rate and Market Insight have also helped to align her teams, while fostering a culture of collaboration. With access to the platform, Natalie can ensure that all team members are on the same page, allowing them to make informed decisions without needing frequent check-ins with revenue managers.

As a result, concerns can be addressed more efficiently, fostering collaboration between properties even if they operate in different markets or have varying market mixes.