Dynamic rate marketing: Combining online marketing and campaigns with real-time hotel inventory and pricing

Written by Siteminder

Hotels have been using the same forms of marketing their room rates for years. Room rates are either described as “beginning from $100 per night” or giving a rate range such as “ranging from $100 to $300 per night”.

But today’s interconnected travelers want the specifics. Enter dynamic rate marketing, which allows hoteliers to use their real-time availability and pricing and broadcast it into various online marketing campaigns. Dynamic rate marketing works so well because potential guests have all the information they need – they see exact current room prices for the rooms they’re interested in and a clear path to purchase. Additionally, hotels are empowered to develop much more effective direct booking strategies.

The key channels in play here are:

• Metasearch sites like TripAdvisor, Kayak, and Trivago. By paying for a higher placement, you can attempt to shift attention away from OTAs and drive direct bookings.
• Retargeting ads on the Google Display Network and Facebook are a great way to win back abandoned reservations with the most current rates and availability. You can even take it a step further and offer them a discount on the rooms they viewed.
• Website promotions that highlight your pricing. This works very well for mobile bookers, because they tend to be more ready to buy.
• Banner advertising like those displayed on the Google Display Network.
• Email promotions to your database.

The importance of real-time everything is becoming more apparent. After all, real-time data is an enabler for hotels in a number of ways. Not only does it allow hotels to advertise room rates in real-time, but they can also monitor real-time pricing data to keep a pulse on the market. Having real-time data allows hoteliers to assess the level of live demand in the market so that they can react faster, and more accurately – whether it’s increasing their rates or lowering their rates and putting promotions out. Updated room rates can be pushed out to all online distribution channels in real-time. Rooms are booked and availability is updated in real-time.

This is why technology like channel managers and market intelligence tools are crucial. The power in SiteMinder’s Prophet solution, for example, is that it breaks market intelligence down into consumable and meaningful insights that matter, and takes away all the white noise that can come with big data.

You can start using Prophet Pricing Intelligence for FREE today.