The Riverside Hotel is located just 5 minutes away from the city center of Durban, boasting of wonderful views across a magnificent green belt stretching from the Umgeni River to the Indian Ocean. This hotel reflects resort life within the city. With 169 superbly appointed bedrooms, two restaurants and a conference facility, this hotel has been designed to offer the guests a luxurious and relaxed environment.
This hotel was using the services of a revenue management company, Ash Technologies (part of Izzi hotels) based in Cape Town who were responsible for online marketing for the hotel. However, the company was using manual ways of revenue management which often left money on the table. The changing market demand trends, competition hotel rates and last-minute bookings were difficult to track manually and therefore, revenues through online platforms could not be enhanced, especially on the backdrop of lockdowns imposed by covid crisis.
Ash Technologies partnered with
Aiosell in July’20 and performed a one-month free trial by using Aiosell on The Riverside Hotel Durban. The benefits of
dynamic pricing and automation were glaringly visible. Leanne, the head of revenue management team saw the automated pricing would have dual benefits, in terms of increasing business for the hotel, and freeing her time for other strategic activities. The rates were now getting calculated taking into account lead time, occupancy levels, time of the day, seasonality, day of the week& market/competitors’ and sometimes changed upto 20-30 in a day ensuring that every opportunity to increase revenue was optimized.
Analytics, Reporting & Notifications ensured that the hotel & Revenue Managers were fully in sync with the hotel performance with the help of Aiosell Reports (Daily Reports, Analytics Reports & Pickup Reports). The reviews and reputation management module ensured that each customer review was sent directly to hotel and could be responded to immediately.