'Dynamic pricing mega opportunity for independent accommodations'

RoomRaccoon is an all-in-one hotel management system that enables independent hoteliers to maximise profitability and improve the guest experience. According to founder and CEO Tymen van Dyl, 'dynamic pricing' offers great opportunities for them. "Average occupancy rates can go up 10% just like that," he says.

Thousands of independent accommodation establishments worldwide use RoomRaccoon software. "It is a complete package for managing small and medium-sized independent hotels, say 10 to 100 rooms. RoomRaccoon is running at against 700 Dutch hotels and against 1700 hotels in Europe and South Africa. We started relatively recently and are growing very fast. Our ambition is to become the global leader in Hotel Management software. With the trend of integrating software packages more and more, we are creating a dynamic total solution that unburdens a hotel. In our vision, automation does not replace people but systems work in synergy with personal hospitality. This is how you improve the guest experience, while achieving greater efficiency and cost savings."

According to Van Dyl, there are huge opportunities for hoteliers in dynamic pricing. "Revenue management can be very extensive and complicated. That's why we saw this mainly in larger (chain) hotels with a Revenue Management team and associated system. In essence, however, matching room pricing to real-time supply and demand is not that complicated at all. RoomRaccoon continuously determines the sales probability of a room and optimally adjusts the room price per booking channel accordingly. This is how we maximise both visibility and occupancy. We look at how much time is left to sell a room, how many rooms are still available and what the, often larger, competitor is doing. The average occupancy rate can thus be increased by as much as 10%. As far as I know, RoomRaccoon is the only system worldwide that includes this as standard. Yet we see a lot of reluctance among hoteliers to venture into it."

It is not easy for hoteliers to make the right choice from all the different IT systems. According to Van Dyl, you have to weigh up two things. "First: what is your ambition? Will you leave everything as it is or are you driven to get more out of your business? And: what is your technical capacity? Will you tie the software systems together yourself and work with different parties and contracts or would you rather have everything in one? RoomRaccoon is the only Hotel Management System that brings together PMS, Channel Manager, Booking Engine, Dynamic Pricing, competition pricing, Upselling, Online check-in including ID scanner, payments, Housekeeping management, links with other systems such as accounting, room keys, checkout et cetera completely in one system."