RateTiger manages online distribution, thus enabling hoteliers to switch from a time-consuming multi-channel process to a single point of entry to the market
Ista Hyderabad has select RateTiger to help in managing its online sales channels for better room booking statistics.The RTAllocator being utilised in the Ista, cuts down on costs and resources that will be used for maintaining and regularly updating third party websites acting as sales channels for the hotel.
“We were looking for a tool that can help update various distribution channels quickly and efficiently. Experienced revenue managers suggested that we should try RTAllocator as it helps centrally manage the distribution channels through a single interface,” says Shibin Abraham, reservations manager at the hotel.”
The flagship product of eRevMax Technologies – co-founded by Andrew Morsi and Reuel Ghosh – this particular tool helps in online distribution management, ensuring revenue maximisation for the rooms. It has won the Platinum European Seal of e-Excellence for the ‘Marketing of Innovation’ award.
The portfolio includes the RT Shopper, which is an online, real-time benchmarking tool, that allows individual, regional or corporate properties to consolidate bookings and generate reports about the room rates across the market and various distribution channels. The Shopper can also generate reports on a weekly basis, facilitating a more comprehensive evaluation of the market feeds. It is available in two versions – Pro and Lite.
The RTAllocator allows central maintenance of distribution channels on a single interface. This helps in the storage and maintenance of complex rate structures, mark-up/margins, as also deductions and provisions for updating multiple channels in minutes, if required. It achieves all this through a single interface – which is a boon, since a large percentage of bookings come in from varied sites and third party distribution channels with differing interfaces.
The third component is the RTChannel manager that combines the utility of the first two components, while enabling hotels to retrieve consolidated booking information of the various channels in a single interface, and view bookings in various reports. It also allows alert settings has provisions to set a market strategy in place, and implement it through a single interface.
In addition, the other components of the tool are the RTCorp that allows a corporate location to view the rates and bookings of its hotels as displayed in different websites, in one composite report. This is an extremely customisable solution. RTWeb caters to travel websites; it enables a travel site to understand its market position by comparing and displaying competitor’s rates, in Excel and HTML formats, in a single currency even across multiple countries. RTConnect acts as an interface between the various systems and the IDS systems, as also various distribution systems like CRS, RMS and PMS, and suchlike, in a real time environment.
Speaking of the utility of the RateTiger solution, Shibil Mallik, head, sales and marketing, Ista Hyderabad said, “We have heard good reviews about RTAllocator from other hotels as well. We are sure RTAllocator Pro will assist us in handling our partner OTAs (Open Travel Alliance) more efficiently and help us streamline our rate and inventory management effectively.”
During the implementation, there were some interoperability issues, but, as Abraham says, “Different portals have different clauses, and RTAllocator needs to be configured accordingly. Today, we consider it as one of the best user-friendly tools available.”
The eRevMax team handles the backend so the customer only deals with the front interface, once all the connections are in place. The RateTiger team will help installing the software on the client’s PC, which is a matter of minutes, and configure it to the hotelier’s requirements during the initial training.
“When looking to implement any channel management tool for online rate strategies it is essential you chose a product that is easy to use and can be understood by the team that will be using it. You also need to ensure your rates and availability is constantly updated on all channels, so that if the dedicated team member is away, someone else needs to be able to pick up the task,” says Udai Singh Solanki, chief information officer, eRevMax Technologies.
The Ista team claims to have derived not only increased revenues from this implementation, but also better time and revenue management and hand-in-hand efficiency.
