UK: Following trials at a select number of hotels, the new revenue management technology will be rolled out automatically across the full UK OYO portfolio at no cost to owners.
The tools are additional to OYO’s existing revenue management features, and have been designed to help independent hotel owners to optimise performance and capture increased levels of business post-lockdown.
New features include:
• Smart Pricing Manager – introduced within the OYO OS owner app, this tool gives hotel owners the power to adjust their room prices instantly upwards or downwards within a specified range.
• Cancellation Prediction Engine – the technology calculates the probability of every customer actually turning up to check in, based on the booking characteristics, customer profiles and historical trends of the property. The final output indicates the number of rooms that may end in no-shows or cancellations on a real time basis. Operating in sync with OYO’s inventory management system, it can automatically open rooms based on the predicted number of cancelled rooms.
OYO trialled the Cancellation Prediction Engine at hotels in Earls Court, Shepherd’s Bush and Finchley. It helped to improve occupancy levels between five and 19 per cent at these properties. In total, occupancy levels averaged above 70 per cent during August.
Rishabh Gupta, head of OYO UK and Europe, commented: “The current pandemic has created an oversupplied hotel ecosystem owing to the lower-than-usual demand from guests and gradual increase in availability of properties, so it is more important than ever that OYO responds with agility to help our independent hoteliers capture demand and maximise occupancy and RevPar. OYO’s revenue management systems are based on data, technology and expertise; and here, we’ve also listened to partner feedback to introduce tools that are not only effective, but also give our partners greater input where they’ve told us they want it.”
During August, OYO achieved nationwide occupancy levels of 63.4 per cent across its open rooms. For September, the company expects to make a minimum of 400 further rooms available as more hotels reopen and new partners are added.
