How is the occupancy rate of hotel rooms calculated?

Hotel occupancy rate refers to the percentage of the total number of rooms actually rented divided by the total number of rooms. In addition, you can learn more about the concept of rate of return. It will help you better understand their concepts, relationships and practical management functions. Analysis on the Application of Hotel Revenue Management in Front Office

Abstract: Although revenue management is a very complicated concept, it is relatively simple in application. When hotels implement revenue management theory, it depends on the combination of "artificial intelligence" and "general computer technology", and there is no need to complicate its theory.

Although revenue management is a modern scientific operation management method developed in 1980s, there are few hotels using revenue management in China, which is mainly due to some misunderstandings that affect the effective application of revenue management. The discussion on the implementation of revenue management focuses too much on the automatic computer system, too much on the research of revenue management theories such as linear programming, dynamic programming and marginal revenue control, and completely ignores the potential connotation of revenue management theory.

Although revenue management is a very complicated concept, it is relatively simple in application. When hotels implement revenue management theory, they rely on the combination of "artificial intelligence" and "general computer technology". There is no need to complicate its theory. This paper introduces some methods of its application in hotels.

Basic principles of income management

The basic principle of revenue management is "five principles"; That is, the products of the enterprise can be sold to the most suitable customers at the best time, at the best price and through the best channels, so as to maximize the hotel's income.

The operating practice of hotel revenue management is to quantitatively predict the needs of different customers at different times by subdividing the market and guests, and determine the dynamic control through optimization methods, so as to maximize the total revenue of the hotel and ensure the sustained growth of hotel profits.

Revenue management is a systematic project of hotel management.

When implementing the revenue management system, it should be clear that this system can operate well not only in the front office, but also in a systematic project to increase business income and strengthen hotel management, which requires the operation at the hotel level. J.W.Marriot II, chairman of Marriott Hotel Group in the United States, said: "The top level of the hotel must implement revenue management for the hotel, and the CEO needs 100% to support this work." The involvement of the highest level is the basis for supporting and establishing the management system and ensuring its effective work.

Therefore, in order to operate the revenue management system well, the hotel should make overall arrangements, the comprehensive marketing department (the head of revenue management) and the front office should coordinate their operations, and the general manager of the hotel should take the lead in the revenue management system.

Basic content of front desk income management

Because the lobby is the information collection center of the hotel, all kinds of house management secretaries, price historical files, all kinds of house price drama files, occupancy rates of all kinds of rooms in different periods, and all kinds of guest historical data are concentrated in the database of the lobby, which sometimes leads to the mistake of taking the lobby as the main position of the revenue management system. When it comes to the management of hotel room price income, it is necessary to understand the various structures of hotel room service income:

First, the rental income of the agreed guests, including the individual and group guests of the agreed company, the travel team income of the agreed travel agency, the group guest income of the agreed meeting, and the long-term housing income;

Second, the network company and the reservation center agreed on rental income;

The third is the personal rental income at the front desk.

The first and second types of rental income are basically signed by the hotel marketing department with relevant enterprises through agreements. These two types of negotiated rental income account for about 75%-80% of the total hotel defense income in the current period, while the third type of front office individual rental income accounts for about 20%-25% of the total hotel room service income in the current period.

The front office revenue management operation is mainly about the marketing of front office individuals, how to effectively raise the house price of front office individuals, how to make full use of various resources of hotels and society, and increase the consumption of front office individuals.

Practical operation of front desk income management

1, segment market and customers, and forecast demand.

PhilipKetler and JohnBowen pointed out in their book Hotel and Tourism Marketing: "The idea behind revenue management is to effectively manage revenue and inventory through pricing differences, and its basis is the demand elasticity of selected market segments". Each hotel has its own market positioning, but there are still many differences in customer classification, source channels and consumption characteristics. The consumption demand, price and consumption characteristics of different types of guests are also very different, so their consumption behavior patterns are also different. Scientific segmentation of markets and guests can provide accurate information sources for hotels to control resources and improve revenue.

On the basis of market segmentation and guest information, we can make relatively accurate predictions of different types of guest needs, adopt different pre-sale methods and price differentiation control, implement dynamic management and marginal revenue management, and minimize the risk of resource use. If the risk of resource use can be minimized, the expectation of hotel revenue can be optimistic.

2. It is necessary to control the occupancy rate of individual guests in front of the door.

Average room rate and average occupancy rate are two major factors that affect hotel room service income. The personal rental income in front of the door has a great influence on the average price of the hotel. Therefore, it is necessary to properly control the occupancy ratio of agreement guests and individual guests in front of the door in order to maximize the average hotel price. In hotels, the price of general agreement guests is lower than that of individual guests in front of the door, but the agreement guests are generally contacted by the marketing department. Due to the incentive of market competition, the hotel management attaches more and more importance to the marketing department and the work pressure is increasing. The marketing department will continue to do everything possible to expand the coverage of the agreed guests as the work performance of the department. With the increase of the customer coverage agreed by the marketing department, the occupancy rate of individual customers in front of the door will drop all the way. If we want to ensure the maximum average price of the hotel, we need the coordination of the hotel authorities, analyze the market situation and the historical data of the rental income of the marketing department and the front office respectively, sort out the appropriate occupancy rate of the individuals in the front office, and prevent the downward trend of the occupancy rate of the individuals in the front office. When implementing the front office revenue management, this problem should be paid enough attention by the hotel management authorities.

3. Dynamic price setting

Price is the most sensitive consumption factor for customers, the most direct management lever for sales, and the main means to increase or decrease hotel profits. At present, under the market situation of oversupply and competitive incentive, almost all hotels have developed from a single static price to price management with multi-price and competitive optimization price. The dynamic price includes the preferential price of individual guests of the agreement company, the house price of travel team, the house price of conference team, the house price of long-term guests and the floating price of individual guests in front of the door. For hotels, when making dynamic prices, the most valuable data is the classified prices of rival hotels in the same region.

4. Oversubscription control

Because there is a certain difference between pre-sale and actual check-in, hotels usually implement a certain proportion of overbooking to reduce the loss when pre-sale and actual check-in are different. The proportion of oversubscription depends on the cooperation between the front desk and the marketing department, analyzing historical data and determining a basic reasonable probability.

This work can be started from several aspects:

Check the reservation. Some guests reserve rooms long in advance. For some time before check-in, some guests can't arrive or cancel their trip in the near future for various reasons, but not all guests will take the initiative to inform the hotel. The front office should check with the guests by phone many times before they arrive, and make adjustments quickly if there are any changes, and notify the relevant departments to re-book or sell the rooms to other guests.

Increase the guaranteed reservation. Pay a deposit in advance or ask for a credit card guarantee to transfer the risk to the guests reasonably, especially during the peak hours of hotel business, such as holidays and major local economic and trade activities.

Strengthen coordination with the marketing department. Because most of the booked guests are generated by the agreement unit of the marketing department, and the salesmen of the marketing department generally relax their requirements for the agreement unit in order to expand their performance, so in the case of overbooking, it is necessary to strengthen communication with the marketing department, strengthen the control of overbooking and reduce hotel losses.

The general oversold formula is as follows:

Number of rooms exceeded = number of rooms cancelled temporarily+number of rooms scheduled but not arrived+number of rooms scheduled to check out early-number of rooms scheduled to be delayed.

Each factor in the above formula has the word "prediction". To solve this problem, it is not easy to be as accurate as possible, which depends on the accumulation and analysis of historical data (business figures of each business period), strengthen the communication between the front desk and the marketing department, and determine a generally suitable proportion.

5. Price demand control for holidays and major events

Holidays and major market events are often the best time for hotels to make profits. How to make good use of this time is the time for hotel management and front office to give full play to the management income efficiency system. The management motto of this period should be "Do it when it is time to do it", and raise the price when it is time to raise the price, without thinking too much about other subsequent influences. Otherwise, the machine won't come again without waiting for me. In a short period of time when the market is in short supply, the most basic consumer psychology is "demand" rather than "supply".

6. Management of team sales and sales agents

For group sales, for example, the price of travel teams of travel agencies should be adjusted and controlled in time according to the market changes at various stages, mainly the total consumption of travel agencies, the average occupancy rate of hotels, the fluctuation of average house prices, and the economic prosperity index of local markets. For sales agents, such as online booking center agents, after analyzing the market situation once a year, they can readjust the newly issued prices.

In order to increase the sales of online booking, the key measure for hotels is to negotiate competitive prices with online booking agents and give them a "step-by-step" reward system, so that hotels and online booking agents can "* * * win * * *".

7. Make full use of the resources of online reservation and reservation center.

The emergence and development of online booking and booking center is the inevitable and progress of economic marketization, and it is also a result of economic marketization industry segmentation. At present, Ctrip and E Long, two major online booking companies in China, account for more than 80% of the online booking business. They introduced strategic investors and went public through capital operation, and established a solid market position. The emergence of these online booking "middlemen" is an available resource with low cost and good income for single hotels or hotel group members, and it is a useful supplement to the original marketing methods of hotels. These online booking companies have gathered at least thousands of hotel booking networks. On the one hand, they provide customers with more choices and are close to their psychological needs. On the other hand, the scale of the reservation network operated by a single hotel or hotel group is incomparable. Even the largest hotel group in China manages only a few hundred hotels. There is absolutely no need for us to mind that the existence and development of online "booking middlemen" will take away part of the hotel's profits. There is no such thing as a free lunch. We should adopt the attitude of "from each according to his ability, to get what he needs" and encourage member hotels to cooperate with him for common development.

According to the latest report written by Bill Carlton of the Hotel Industry Research Center of Cornell Hotel Management College in the United States, in the next few years, more than 20% of customers will make reservations online.

This proportion was 8.34% in 2002. In the operating report of Oriental Garbo member hotels, we can find that many hotels have already booked 10%- 1 1%. Therefore, for hotels, both individual hotels and group companies should make full use of the resources of these online booking agents to increase the number of hotels.

8. Management of hotel affiliated resources

The supporting resources of the hotel mainly refer to the dining, entertainment facilities and conference facilities outside the guest room, which are also good product resources sold in the front office. When implementing revenue management, the front office staff should be invited to be familiar with the hotel's affiliated resources, sales price policies and price rules, and be trained in marketing to master marketing skills, so as to develop the sales of these resources in a targeted manner.

9. Comparison and analysis of operating conditions

The front office compares all kinds of business data every month, including occupancy rate, various rooms, customer segmentation, sales of various supporting resources, etc., mainly compared with the data of the previous year, and then makes a detailed analysis according to the data of similar rival hotels in the market, and takes these valuable marketing data as the decision-making basis for the front office to formulate housing price policies in various periods and report them to the hotel management authorities.

10, revenue management combined with customer value

The value of different customers is different, and sometimes the value of customers cannot be simply defined by a profit index. For example, hotels in second-tier cities have fewer foreign guests. At this time, if the hotel knows how to attract more foreign guests with more favorable prices, even if the check-in price of these foreign guests is lower than that of domestic guests, the comprehensive value they bring to the hotel, such as courtesy, familiarity with and reference to foreign guests' consumption habits, such as the spread of consumption concepts and humanistic feelings, including the change of foreign language practice atmosphere in the hotel, will have a good comprehensive effect.

Problems needing attention in applying revenue management theory

1, the role of employees' practical experience in selling houses deserves more attention.

Hotel revenue management system is the product of high combination of computer intelligence and manual experience. A successful front office revenue management system includes not only the information provided by the functions of the front office computer system, but also the historical data of customers, the income figures of house prices in various historical periods, the changes of house prices in various historical periods, and the analog figures of similar local star-rated hotels. At the same time, it also includes the sales experience of the front desk staff and the authorization system of the front desk house price policy. Of course, the accuracy of computer data is credible, but these data are "dead" past tense, while market changes are "living" future tense. Therefore, people should pay more attention to their flexible response and practical experience to emergencies such as holidays, business peaks and hotel price changes in a specific period.

2. The front desk should have the concept of "marketing department"

To manage the front office income well, the front office manager must have the concept that the front office is also the marketing department. In addition to the daily management of the department, it is also necessary to instill the concept that "the front office is the second marketing department of the hotel" into the front office staff, provide marketing business training and marketing negotiation skills guidance to the assistant manager team and the front desk reception team, and treat every guest who walks into the hotel as the marketing target. "Don't let a guest go" should be the guiding principle of the front office when marketing rooms. If there is distance space and cost in marketing, then the marketing of guests entering the hotel is the marketing with the lowest cost and no distance space, and it is also the marketing with the greatest probability of success.

3, formulate the front office revenue management reward system.

In order to promote the effectiveness of revenue management in the front office, the front office should formulate incentive schemes of "exceeding the average room rate" and "exceeding the occupancy rate" and report them to the hotel management authorities for approval and implementation, so as to maintain the enthusiasm of employees.

The front office can formulate a sales promotion and reward system for employees, so that the concept of the front office as the "second marketing department" of the hotel can be implemented.

4. Analysis of the proportion of hotel agreement guests and front desk guests.

Hotel room service customers are basically composed of three major guests, namely agreement guests, online booking guests and individual guests in front of the door.

The first is to agree on guests. Including: individual customers or group customers of the agreement company; Travel team of travel agency; Agree on long-term guests; Group guests of the agreement meeting. Usually, the marketing department of the hotel will sign a reservation cooperation agreement with relevant enterprises to determine the preferential prices of these guests. According to the season, the number of rooms and the number of days, some agreed prices can be questioned.

The second is to book the agreement guests of the company and the reservation center online.

The prices of these guests are generally signed once a year, which is basically unchanged. In a hotel, due to the positioning of the market and the hotel itself, the price income of the above two types of agreement guests generally accounts for about 75%-80% of the total price income in the current period, and there is a certain booking period. Among the agreed guests, the online booking of personal room rate is the highest, but the commission is required, accounting for about 8%- 10% of the agreed room rate, followed by the personal room rate of the agreed company, followed by the meeting team, and the travel agency team has the lowest price.

Third, individual guests in front of the lobby.

These guests usually don't make reservations, but usually check in immediately. The house price income of such guests generally accounts for about 20%-25% of the total house price income in the current period. The check-in price of individual guests in front of the door is much higher than the average house price of the agreed guests, usually about 50% higher. Therefore, the revenue management of the front desk is mainly to standardize the individual customers in front of the door. How to improve the occupancy rate and occupancy price can make the revenue management function of the front office stand out.

5. The importance of individual guests in front of the door to the average hotel price.

In order to illustrate the important role of individual guests in front of the door in the average room price of a hotel, we take a hotel with 300 rooms as an example. If the occupancy rate of the hotel in the current period is 70% and the average room price is 380 yuan/room, the room rental income in the current period is:

①300 rooms ×70%×380 yuan/room = 79,800 yuan.

To achieve the current income of 79,800 yuan, according to the agreement, the total occupancy rate of guests is 80% and the average house price is 350 yuan/room, so the average house price of a single guest in front of the door should reach 500 yuan/room.

②300 rooms× 70 %× 80 %× 350 yuan/room. Day = 58,800 yuan;

③300 rooms× 70 %× 20 %× 500 yuan/room. Day = 2 1, 000 yuan.

①=②+③

As can be seen from the above figures, the average house price of individual guests in front of 500 yuan/Room is 43% higher than that of agreement guests in 350 yuan/Room. It can be seen that increasing the average price of a single guest in front of the door contributes a lot to the average price of the hotel in the current period.

6. Pay attention to the income management of non-standard houses.

According to the agreement of the hotel, the rooms used by guests are mostly concentrated in ordinary standard rooms, while the luxury rooms in the hotel, such as luxury rooms, luxury suites, presidential suites, executive rooms, etc., have a high vacancy rate and good room conditions. Due to the limitation of hotel price policy, the rent of these luxury rooms is usually difficult to sell. In order to change this situation of idle resources, hotel managers should fully authorize the front office, and then the front office manager should fully authorize the front desk reception. Only by using the concept of "going with the market" can the front desk receptionist have room for negotiation to promote luxury rooms. From the ultimate goal of revenue management, selling more luxury rooms contributes the most to the average house price of a single guest in front of the door.

7. Revenue management during holidays and major events

The opening of holidays and major events plays an important role in the hotel's overall room service income, and has a significant pulling effect on the improvement of average house price and the increase of net profit. In addition to the three "Golden Weeks" designated by the state, there is also the climax of Tomb-Sweeping Day's returning home from ancestor worship every year. Major business activities planned by local governments should also be planned as the fourth and fifth items ... "Golden Week", so as to adjust and upgrade the current housing prices and control the number of low-priced houses such as tourism teams.

8. Coordination of oversold control

It is a commercial practice for hotels to overbook. The problem is how to determine a reasonable oversold ratio. For the determination of this reasonable proportion, most of the hotel room sales come from the agreement guests of the marketing department, and the individual booking and team booking of the agreement company account for the vast majority, leaving little room for individual booking at the front desk. In order to increase the rental income, it is necessary to strengthen the coordination between the front office and the marketing department, make a sober analysis and judgment on the "virtual" and "real" historical situation and the individual booking situation of each agreement company, filter out the "virtual" booking rooms by collecting the deposit in advance, increase the proportion of "real" booking rooms, and determine the reasonable over-booking ratio.

With the development of computer and information technology, the pre-sale and room management of most hotels have also entered the stage of digital management. Manual operation and "head-slapping" sales have not adapted to the fiercely competitive market. The application of revenue management mode, through the microscopic analysis of a large number of customer data and more accurate quantitative management, should be said to meet the needs of market and times development. With the complete marketization of the hotel industry in the past decade, the fundamentals of oversupply have not changed much, and price competition will continue for a long time. Domestic hotels have not introduced revenue management theory for a long time, and few hotels have fully developed and applied this revenue management system. Many hotels still have the bottleneck of "capital investment" and "talent training" when developing and applying this revenue management system, but this does not hinder our practice of applying revenue management theory. We can apply the concept of revenue management to the management practice of the front desk and integrate it into the actual operation.