Business Reporting
Automated reporting helps Travelodge’s revenue management team rest easy
Project: change++ developed automated reporting to help Travelodge’s Revenue Management team forecast income for the upcoming quarter.
Services: Business reporting
Results: Automating the forecast reporting gave Travelodge insight and time to respond to changing market conditions.
The client
Travelodge is a widely recognised hotel brand across the UK, Ireland and Spain. It has over 45,000 rooms across over 595 hotels and is focused on making it affordable to travel and stay in the UK. Travelodge is committed to being number one in the sector on price, and has invested in revenue management to deliver the right pricing strategy in each location.
Their needs
Travelodge has a price-checking programme that monitors the rates of other hotel groups to ensures it maintains its number one position, as well as other management initiatives that complement the focus on price competitiveness and drive efficiencies. The hotel chain’s Revenue Management department wanted to develop an automated report to enable the group to forecast income over the next quarter, in order to take steps where a shortfall was indicated.
What we did
change++ took time to understand what Travelodge’s Revenue Management department wanted the solution to achieve for them. Without a clearly defined brief, change++ explored different options with Travelodge and recommended that rather than Excel, the department used Microsoft’s SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). This would accelerate the whole data extraction, consolidation and reporting process. SSRS allows the user to drill down into the data stored in the system and present highly focused insights in centralised reports that multiple stakeholders can access.
By extracting information on future bookings from the group’s reservation systems and comparing sales for the same period the previous year, the new report identifies hotels that are unlikely to meet the quarter’s target. Revenue shortfalls can be addressed immediately with promotions for spare capacity. The report is also used to support decisions on room rates for the next financial period.
“Automating this report makes a significant difference to how quickly we can respond to market conditions. We told change++ what we wanted to achieve, and they worked hard to understand our processes and develop a solution not only to an iterative specification but also by recommending the optimal set of tools.”
- Farabi Syed, Travelodge
The results
Travelodge’s Revenue Management department now has a fully automated process that requires no manual intervention. The new revenue forecast is made available and completely current at 09:00 for the revenue managers to begin their day with a review of the numbers. As the data is centralised within one database, efficiency and accuracy in the process management is greatly enhanced.
Benefits include:
- A speedy solution to an issue that was hard to define at first
- An automated report that draws accurate data from a trusted source
- Revenue managers get a daily forecast at 09:00
- Ability to respond faster to market conditions
- Stronger decision-making within a challenging climate
- The ability to support room rate decisions
- Support for Travelodge’s purpose to provide affordable travel for everyone