Revenue Management Belongs in the Center

revenue management is not just changing rates it is aligning sales marketing revenue and operations really in the center and developing new strategies to help achieve our owners expectations financially welcome to another part of the revenue management playbook my name is tim bursma in this series we dedicate to understand how hotels can drive smarter price decisions within the structure resources and strategy which looks very different for every type of hotel today i'm sitting down with jason d' agostino to impact the revenue management fits within a broader hotel operation where can we add the most value with implementing revenue management how the discipline is changing into technology guest behavior or anything else jason for everyone who don't know you can you maybe give me a slight introduction in your journey what's your role looking like today word is up to you now great thank you and tim thanks for having me so my name is jason d' agostino i'm a certified revenue management executive most recently i had the privilege of overseeing over 70 assets throughout the predominantly throughout the northeast a portfolio of over 300 million in top line room revenue and my my career started in revenue management actually revenue management found me i was a operations person by trade at the time it was an internal promotion opportunity from visions hotels that said look you know what we like what you're doing jason with our sales and marketing teams at the time i was a regional operations manager they said we want to do this ourselves and we want to build our own in house team are you interested and i said absolutely i'm interested why not and as an operator i thought i knew everything about revenue management because i sat in on every revenue call i didn't realize and i didn't truly appreciate until i'm sitting on the other end of the spectrum as the revenue leader how it's more than just changing rates revenue management is not just changing rates it is aligning sales marketing revenue and operations really in the center and developing new strategies to help achieve our owners expectations financially and early on in my career i started in food and beverage and had the opportunity to work through different departments and i did a podcast a while back where i spoke about how food and beverage working in that department really helped shape what i do in revenue management because it's all about margins right it's all about cost control and when you're working in food and beverage and you're working whether it be front of the house or back of the house it's critical that you have your percentages correctly otherwise you're you're running negative and it's the same what we do in revenue management right so we we need to make sure that we're priced properly in order to ensure that we could achieve maximum profitability and flow through yeah it's very interesting that you already made the connection between between the beginning of your journey into your career how it ended up in revenue management and when let's just start at the very beginning and this is in this beginning might be in food and beverage do you have a specific case where you sometimes think back about like this happened to me in food and beverage but i was still working there now i'm a few years further down the line and you still remind yourself of what what happened that time absolutely so in food and beverage at the end of every event that we would do and these events would last until 12 o' clock 1 o' clock in the morning it could have been could have been a wedding could have been you know a special event but at the end of each event we would have to bring back the banquet bar and we would have to review all of the consumed alcohol we would have to review and then redo go over the inventories so that the next morning our gm and our team can look and see okay was this a profitable event did this event make sense because then in a few days it would be part of another meeting that our sales team would have and they would meet with the operations teams and say you know what did was this priced right and you know we did everything in excel there was no ai there was no taking a picture on your phone and this isn't really that long ago this it's not like we're talking decades ago it's just amazing how technology has changed it all and really made it more efficient but when i think back at those events and the different things that i've learned in culinary being able to apply that to what we do today right like if you know you ask me today what are we doing to ensure profitability my first question is to an operator what's our cost per occupied room right what's our cpo are what does all that elements look like and that's the foundation for how we are going to start pricing and set our base prices in our revenue management system and you know as we look at displacement analysis it's funny because it's a constant loop of feedback you're receiving from the results and and i think this is what interested me in revenue management always that i worked in finance before and with finance you're analyzing a bunch of numbers over a longer period and then for the and you basically draw a conclusion however in revenue management you also draw this conclusion but then you can adjust your strategy or you can adjust things on a on a shorter notice to have to be impactful i think the most important thing is here how is the constant feedback loop how is it created and would you say because you quickly mentioned already the topic of ai what would you say is the biggest difference between you having that experience from an fmb perspective and creating that feedback loop and seeing it grow to the company and people will grow up now in the area of ai great points there's a lot in that in what you just said because for me today it's we're in the trust business right with what we do in hospitality whether it be our internal guest or external guest in revenue management stakeholders are looking to us for direction they value our feedback so when i'm able to sit down with stakeholders and they've looked at my credentials if i'm giving advisory work or information or looking at due diligence looking at you know looking at a pro forma right looking at an investment theses where has jason been where has the revenue manager been where has the commercial strategist been what has that individual done what is their background i'm coming not just from academia i am coming from real world experience starting in food and beverage having been a general manager haven't been in different departments and it it really helps because now as i'm sitting down with a general manager they know that i've been in their shoes they know that i understand the questions that the general manager is going to get during a monthly p and l meeting or a you know pop in visit that they may have with their regional performance manager so all of that's relevant and i believe makes a better case for why people would want to do business with jason as opposed to maybe somebody else because i i could truly say that i get it and i when i'm training revenue managers i like to well when i'm hiring a revenue manager i like to try to get a revenue manager that has the operations background not just somebody who graduated with a degree in statistics who smart wits you know computers and excel i want somebody who knows how to communicate and do so well because what we're doing with the data points that we have is we are we're not just relaying information we're trying to promote a strategy that revenue management believes in to operators that may not see it that way i'll give you an example you know general manager says look we're not dropping rates below x and there could be a number of reasons why they don't want to be the party hotel and i get that and emotion i liked what you did a podcast once where you brought up where you mentioned that there's a lot of emotion that an owner or a gm has when they say let's not price below x at the same time there's a need for occupancy right now we're not saying every rate is going to be sold at x rates we need maybe a few rooms and then we'll build up so for us to be able to sell that strategy and convince the stakeholders that this is the right thing to do for the hotel takes a takes a bit of an odd right it's a balance not just being able to read off you know numbers but be able to articulate it in a way that you know the stakeholders will understand respect and appreciate the value in in how we are communicating that at a revenue meeting yeah and and you say that you're also training revenue management what do you think is the most common i don't like to put the word mistake but the most common growth area for new revenue managers i think new revenue managers coming in think it's they again a lot of them don't necessarily have the operational background what i see today is a lot of times they are just being fast tracked maybe they're in for a year some on speaking with owners one of the frustrations that owners have is that there seems to be this cycle of revenue managers that it's a new revenue manager starting and then perhaps they're only supporting that property for a short period of time they kind of graduate on from you know one scale of asset into the next scale and they continue to progress which that's great for the revenue manager for the hotel owner for the hotel team difficult because you're trying to teach the revenue manager about the comp sets and i think the real the final answer to that question because there's a lot in there but revenue managers i also think need to understand it's not just the data that's in your revenue management system it's the comp set it's how's their sales structure what is their commercial strategy look like as opposed to you know just the day to day rates we have short term midterm and long term objectives and that's if if the revenue manager could see through that and and could put together plans around that that's very powerful and that's going to make a huge positive impact on what that revenue manager is able to accomplish long term yeah yeah and i think also what you see a lot is that like in my previous podcast we spoke about what's the feeling and the emotion from owner operators towards their own prices and i think what you sometimes see with revenue managers especially maybe in the area i mean i'm not that old but like even in the area after me where everyone tries to do everything with ai now it's very factual it's numbers and numbers explained by numbers however the translation from those numbers on a paper on on a sheet towards the owner operator or towards a group it's very hard when you don't have that connection you don't have the touch points you're not knowing where this is actually coming from and what is the labor we put in to actually receive this number on this sheet and i feel that that is very important to have nowadays especially if i look at my job and other things i think you experience the same when you speak to owner operators they have a certain feeling about the numbers on the sheet but if you don't understand what that feeling is for them then it's very hard to get them along or maybe even strange change their strategy to achieve the things you want to achieve so this commercial thinking and this commercial translation maybe even towards communication is pretty hard especially when you don't have the experience absolutely and i i think revenue managers some you know for new revenue managers going in couple just quick things that i i would encourage their perspective to be is that every asset has a story to tell and every asset has a different story to tell they're not cookie cutter those stories are influenced by brand affiliation versus independent versus geography location their comp sets and when was the last time that property was renovated and what's happening at that property when you take all of that you could create the story and tell that story and position it so that we could help create or shape demand for that asset the second part is you know as revenue managers it's important that we position ourselves not just as numbers people but as people who add asset value we increase the assets the value excuse me the value of the asset that we are supporting right and again we do that by establishing short term midterm and then long term goals and planning with the ability to pivot right and pivots the key word if you've got a revenue manager that's just stuck on one theses because that's what the trailing twelve looks like that's not good right you need to be it's agility that makes or breaks us in what we do and when we speak about this where in an organization and can be different kinds of organization where would you put the revenue manager in that organizational structure absolutely revenue manager in the center and in the center because we are we're aligning ourselves with ownership we're aligning ourselves with sales teams marketing teams and the operational and the operations teams so i really feel that we are right there in the center and again not as just people pulling levers but people who are interpreting data people who are partnering with you know all of these departments and then making or recommending significant moves that will impact the net operating income of that asset and in terms of information streams would it be like people reporting to the revenue manager or will be the revenue manager like hey can you provide me with this and i'm going to look into and then give you information back like okay we can potentially think about this because we need this and this for this certain period or for this certain property how would you describe the relationship between is it more like receiving information gathering information or giving information so revenue management has traditionally been that data warehouse or data lake right where you know somebody wants a piece of information they knock on the door or they shoot over an email hey send me that you know send me the star report from two years ago or whatever it was easy enough hit the send button but it's not just the fetching for information anytime someone has come to myself or any of my team members it's could you send me the you know trailing twelve and could you send me the segmentation reports that match up to this time frame that we're looking at and then could you tell me what are the top three influences that impacted performance and what was your strategy during that time you know and how does that match up to budget so we're we're not just a data warehouse but we are you know a data warehouse plus okay what were we doing and what could we have done to do better right so it's commercial strategy and that's where we all need to kind of align ourselves with the different departments and again why i truly believe that revenue management is in the center of it all because we influence many different departments and many things that are happening in these assets and you mentioned commercial strategy and and in the podcast i did before with nick it still has to be uploaded to the internet so people can watch that one as well he was speaking about commercial managers more than revenue managers which i found a very interesting shift because when i started the revenue management we had this department where we're sitting with 16 revenue managers side by side desk by desk screen by screen and everyone was doing putting the numbers and everything and he he was my mentor at the time and actually now he shifted a bit more towards commercial managers which i found a very interesting shift and i think what you say about the position of the revenue management team or the revenue manager within within a broader perspective it's also similar to that one would you also describe it like that so what i see happening is there's more and more of this commercial opportunity or commercial position entering the scene and this has been happening quietly i think for a while but it's growing more because and i think it's influenced from ai and i i try not to to push everything back to ai because ai and revenue management is nothing new right machine learning has existed for decades how we move forward with it that's something different but what i see happening is the revenue manager can role kind of not fading but changing where you have less revenue managers and more analysts who are actually just validating our revenue management systems and then the great revenue managers okay because there's so many great revenue managers out there are able to keep up with this evolution in our discipline and are able to emerge as the commercial leader aligning sales marketing revenue management and operations because no longer are we having to spend hours on pulling levers and you know doing all of the doing less tactical work right it becomes now easier on account of machine learning ai and technology just you know improving over time and revenue management systems improving allowing us to now say okay this is what my revenue packet looked like these are the results let me now partner with our sales team to say look you know this is the segmentations that's you know outperforming or underperforming and then make recommendations to our sales leaders based on that so and marketing teams right looking at the different channels okay where is the business coming from is that ota that's overproducing is that profitable or is it not profitable right and then that commercial strategist really is again like i said in the center of it all because ownership again wanting that wanting to improve not just rgi but noi that net operating income that is the bottom line the cash flow so great time to be in this discipline you know not nothing that you know you hear all these headlines about ai changing everything i'm excited about what ai is going to do in this lane in this discipline because there's always been so much work for that revenue manager no i totally agree and i think when i look at ai the thing i struggled with revenue management and that was the point where i said i'm never going to be in revenue management anymore after my internship was the amount of manual work i had to do in order to execute the strategy and if you pull that back you basically had to do everything manually you had to copy and paste you had to do this and this in order to even start working on a strategy and then you have to put in so much manual work to execute that strategy however with with the technical technology nowadays it's so much easier to execute a strategy because there are so much helpful tools and it can be a revenue management system but it can also be ai tools it can be ai it can be everything in order to faster execute your strategy and get the results in back faster which makes the review cycle even faster which makes a market even faster reacting to every change there is so in this case i'm i'm super excited with the introduction of ai and and the vast majority of changes we can do nowadays in order to execute that strategy however i think on the other side is having that knowledge like you have done it all to understand what actually happened and what i'm fearing a bit is everyone who comes in now with ai and don't have to experience where things are coming from that it's harder to execute a strategy to think of a strategy or change a strategy because which strings are you actually pulling i think going back to the point where you said i worked in f and b and then i made my way up especially when you think about nowadays where you can execute strategies so fast that it becomes even more important what is your background and what's the liability you created over those years i listen to a podcast yesterday where they say the most important thing in the upcoming years is building your own little brand like being a brand yourself because that's going to stand out in a world where everything is going to execute it so fastly and i think this is something you see happening now especially when things can be executed so fast there should be a point of trust in order to change the strategy and now i know that i've used a lot of words but what's your take on all of this we don't have to be worried about hey i need to spend 50 hours to execute this strategy but we can spend spend more time in building a strategy i agree with it 100% i actually just just this morning posted on linkedin in response to a a message that was out there about hotels there's more deals coming out there in in in the hotel market which is great right and the deals are good and it's good that deals are happening but you know every deal is a pro forma is a investment thesis and the data points look great for those deals to happen but in order to keep the pro forma and in order to make those expectations it's not the data that we have we have the data we have the technology it's how fast can we respond to changing markets to shape the demand enter what you just said how quickly can we implement a strategy we could look at a data right now and we could you know we could look at a hotel that may be underperforming and i know we could very quickly come up with two or three things that need to happen in order to flip the script right how quickly can you execute that well i think some of the brands are changing their systems to help make that easier i do like independent hotels because in the independent world it is a lot easier and in certain revenue management systems do make it easier where it's the push of fewer buttons where it's already speaking with a channel manager across multiple distribution channels so yes it you know speed is critical and then of course you know verifying that these strategies went were implemented the correct way is equally important yeah and i think and and this is the thing with i think with speed is always the thing it's the same as driving a car if you go super fast and you make a minor mistake the outcome can be can be quicker so there is a certain risk of performing at a at a at a high speed level i mean therefore you have elite race drivers and not everyone is driving a formula one car or or an s car it's good that no one else no one not everyone does it but it's more specialized job and i think especially when you look at the like everyone is saying to me like revenue management before was a very specialized job and the question is here was it or becomes it even more specialized now by turning into commercial leaders yeah so so so there are different takes on this what do you think about this do you think that revenue management in the historical sense it was a very specialized job or do you think now the skill set needs to be more specialized now we're acting at a faster pace great question and you know i say this gently and respect respectfully to all of our revenue management peers who you know started their careers at a at a different point right i think earlier on because it's always been an evolution earlier on it started in you know your reservations manager managers were your revenue managers and it made sense at the time right so but then as things have changed more technology right more working with sales more marketing more digital marketing right you know people who can go in and analyze return on ad spend people who understand different distribution channels who understand that the otas are not necessarily the enemies but a necessity in the and the cost of doing business being able to have individuals who understand and value that and can put it all together and align themselves with sales marketing revenue and operations leads me to believe that it is more of a specialty today than it was in the past and if we summarize this and again we look at the previous revenue managers like the previous era of revenue managers i mean and it's not something negative because i think we always worked with the resources which were available and now there are just more resources available but i think that the side i want to go is like what do you do you think is the biggest difference between like a revenue manager 15 years ago maybe even for yourself maybe that's a better question what do you think if you look back at yourself 15 years ago what's what's the massive change that happened between you doing review management 10 to 15 years ago and doing review management now when i first when i began in revenue management it was for me it was more we were changing rates we were more the rate changer and seen as lever pullers as opposed to having a seat at the table as opposed to influencing on a greater scale as opposed to you know today we're be we're looked at we're tapped to enter meetings where we're looking at hotel acquisitions we're looking at hotel conversions you know we're looking at in we're being invited to meetings where we're looking at a pip or the hotels are looking at a pip and you know the question is jason we have 100 rooms and the mixes you know kings and queen queens and sweets what do we do with this mix is this the right mix or should we look at converting some of these rooms to something else so revenue management today like i said in the center and we're in the center because that evolution has given has really shined the light on what we provide more than just a excel report or a cognos report but being able to say by making xyz change your demand has now shifted and now your hotel can command a higher rate can command more group bookings on shoulder nights or on shoulder periods and that's what's going to drive more top line revenue and bottom line profits that's a very interesting to see that and especially i i fully agree on this take especially because i think over the years you saw this evolution of like basically if you put it into work related things of of the intern sitting at the table for the first time and now sitting not at the head of the table but but you are very close to because of the experience and the knowledge you bring towards and and i think maybe for investment funds it's even more than for independence because there there might be slightly different things there but that evolution in towards hey we we we change rates towards hey we are thinking commercially now in order to execute with rates in order to have the maximum profit here is a very interesting one because at the end of the day we still change rates i mean we align with the strategy to change rates let's put it on that other other systems most likely will execute the rates so it's still part of the job however the perspective has become so much bigger and would you say this is only a take for chains or also for independent properties because you mentioned already independent properties can be moving a bit quicker than a chain because of systems aligning or whatever do you think this change also happened for independent properties absolutely and i don't think it's it's going to be based on the financial position or the position of the ownership and management company overseeing those hotels so it could be it could be branded or non branded but again it's exciting times wherever you are in this in this discipline there's a lot of great things happening and great changes ahead of us with with change i think it's a very more of a mandatory thing that there is a revenue management department with independent properties it's it's less likely at least it's not it's not the standard well will i phrase it correctly if for a lot of independent properties is a very good investment to invest in a commercial leader slash revenue manager yeah so you know i've been asked the question before what do we need it for what's the purpose what are we doing and you know again it we move so quickly if a special event is published and you know the news articles go out and you're don't have a revenue manager or a commercial leader or somebody who's dedicated to looking at that do you really want that to be on the shoulders of your general manager who is handling you know operations who's handling you know guest inquiries who's handling compliance who's general managers have a lot going on and we need our general managers to be focused on what they do best operations and operational excellence enter the revenue manager who that person if they are focused on rates demand shaping demand correctly and making sure that our product product is is priced correctly then it pays itself off and at the end of the day it's always about return on investments are we showing our ownership that we are not just breaking even we don't just want to break even but we're actually delivering good profits that flow to the bottom line by having that position filled with the right person who understands the dynamics of that market you know again i think that's what what really sets apart revenue managers you know great revenue managers understand the different markets and are able to whether it be remote or in market are able to understand the different cycles or different seasonality that happens at these properties in these markets and if you then look at because that's a take i very often heard from owner operators it's like yeah i know my market i know my market better than a system or i know my market better than a revenue manager would never have been in this market and if you if you look at a property like an owner operated property like 45 50 rooms maybe what do you think could step potentially up as a commercial leader if you look at the people which are normally in those size hotels we should be it the first thing i would recommend any revenue manager supporting a 40 50 room property working closely with that owner operator is make sure you visit that property properties in that size there's a lot of emotion there right a lot of times that owner is it's that person's money or family money and you know really responsible for returning investments and distribution right so you need to understand that market you need to have been to the comp sets you need to know what the high demand dates are and price accordingly and if you've got if you have a strategy in mind it it makes sense to over communicate at times with those owners because they may have it set in one way how they see it happening and they you know they may be saying well we need to be at 499 every weekend now they go and they do a rate shop for two weeks out and they see the hotel at 459 but that just shop the advance purchase and maybe you had a cap in there for five rooms at that 459 because you need to sell you need to create some type of base right over communicate in revenue management transparency in anything transparency but especially with what we do is like i said earlier we're in the trust business we need to be 100% transparent with all of the stakeholders so that they understand what your strategy is and i've seen a lot of times where you know somebody with the best intentions makes a move because they're trying to act quickly you know they they see opportunity where they want to respond to the market but because they did not communicate looks like we did something wrong or we made a mistake or left money on the table when in fact we were protecting the owner's financial you know goal yeah no i think that's really interesting i think i think in a lot of things like communication is key always i mean if you're in a relationship i think it's also also the case you should communicate better but it's like explaining afterwards after something happened is something but it's something to learn from explaining in an earlier stage is getting people along the line with you to to do that i think that's that's sometimes a thing which we forget that if we can explain afterwards then everything is fine i mean is it well hindsight's always 20 20 right and you know i when i started my departments i had revenue managers who were again they were gms right before i had worked with them and everybody makes a mistake when a mistake is made in revenue management or specifically in pricing maybe underpricing where the market sold out at a much higher rate or overpricing where you did not command where you over commanded on rates your adr looked nice but your occupancy was you know you fell short those are the times where i don't as long as we understand what we did if you could explain the what and and why and we memorialize it we could re we could we can make up for that we can make up for that very very quickly and i try not to get hung up on those mistakes rather let's look at it as a learning opportunity let's challenge ourselves let's protect next year same date right if it's a reoccurring event like a graduation or a special event that happens annually but then let's say how much money did we lose and let's find ways to 10x what we lost throughout the rest of the year let's make up for that difference some way somehow yeah indeed and i'm just circling a little bit back on when you said when you shape the teams and everything did you experience once that and especially maybe for smaller properties is more the case that an owner has a certain strategy in mind or a certain strategy was there but you really had to push back on it because if you look at the numbers if you look at everything it doesn't add up what they're trying to do and you really had to push back absolutely absolutely and i think that's where you know building that trust comes in having been to the market and have that experience where you've you've been to the comp set makes a difference being able to explain to an owner that look if your goal is x we need to make these moves here and maybe some of that is an advanced purchase strategy that's you know two weeks out one week out whatever that time frame is is potentially selling at a different different rates than what that owner would like to see but we're only selling x amount of rooms at that rate so what's that strategy and that may be there may be multiple things that we're doing to get to it to then overall achieve what that owner is looking for right again in revenue management we have many different segments of business we're not just selling bar or rack right we're selling triple aarp governments right different rate tiers that are needed to achieve the overall revenues and then there were times where that same owner may say look we want everything closed we only want to sell at rack and you know if the comp set's not doing it or if the comp set you know if we're overpricing that's where i like to really have that conversation with the owner and say at the end of the day it's we'll do what you tell us but here's the risk involved once we underscore what that risk is and we all put it out on the table i think it makes a big difference right because you never just want to say no you want to say how but you also want to present what risk are involved if we steer away from what the revenue manager is recommending based on on what they see in the market no i think that's the and that's what i tell all the hotels i speak to when we speak about revenue management and especially with rates and and like for smaller properties we mainly speak about bar or recreates because especially the really small properties like 20 25 rooms they don't have much government they don't have much vat or whatever but then if we speak about revenue management and especially when we want to increase or lower the rate i'm always explaining them it's how much risk are you willing to take in order to increase your price because every change you do comes with a potential risk and comes with a potential price to pay if it didn't work out i think the best example here is that if people want to increase their adr i mean we can increase adr i mean if you want to have an adr of 200 you'll be only have to sell one room for 200 and you have an adr of 200 easy as that however what is the risk and how much risk are you willing to take to keep that adr 200 because the risk can be that you only sell one room and then end up and then end up with a revpar index that's underperform that's way off so and but i think especially especially explaining what the potential risk are and and what i always believe in in the fact is that especially when you speak to owner operators is get them along along the line with the story give them the option to choose from because there is always an option we can always stick with plan a or we can go to plan b however if you if you explain the risk of plan a and explain the risk of plan b and both explain the they can make it a choice but they will be along the line with a choice because they are informed of the risk they are potentially going to take with that choice which i think is a very strong asset for revenue management if you can communicate that very clearly to people absolutely and then i think the other part to this equation which kind of you know links back the evolution of what we're doing is to change in revenue management where at one point a lot of what we did was based on historical data right it was that always just well what did we do last year what did the star report look like last year right today we're not just looking at last year we're looking at last year or previous as a you know not even so much a benchmark but you know what happened but now we're looking at what future demand looks like technology allows us the opportunity to see how well our comp set is likely going to perform and you know thank you to all of the technology that's out there where we could see rates rate changes and and see how often the comp set is changing allows us to sit down with an owner operator and say this is you know what you're right last year we made x amount of dollars and that's the rate that we were selling at and we were able to put on an ms.2 and ms.3 whatever restrictions that you know you you may remember but this is what's happening today and ps2 new hotels just opened up and you've got short term rentals that are in the market that don't even show up on your star report as as inventory in the market so we're not just competing with what we had last year we've got new supply of hotels and short term rentals being sold on airbnb and on expedia and booking.com and other otas that are pushing our placements and i say this also because this kind of goes back to that evolution of from we went from revenue manager to commercial strategist because we're not just looking at the rates but now we're also looking at the otas our placements right what we need to do to optimize our placement on an ota that becomes that commercial strategy bringing in that whole marketing piece into those revenue calls those strategy calls so that we can drive the best performance and optimize profit yeah no i fully agree on this and it's always funny to see that sometimes we stick to old behavior when everything is changing so rapidly and i think especially when looking back to last year and just grabbing back on the beginning of your sentence and we experienced this because sometimes a market is not a steep line upwards it's not that a market every year grows in total and total revenue in that specific market and even if it grows and it can be that there are more competitors and then the share per property is less but when when we speak to when i speak to hotels and say yeah but i have 3% less revenue than the year before and that's very bad like from from that perspective indeed it's not great but then if you looked at a market is for example down with 10% i mean it's still less than the year before but it is always putting everything in perspective that normally when you didn't do anything and just followed your market it would be even worse and that can also be a win sometimes that is not decreasing at a at a at a pace that the market is decreasing and i think there if you look into revenue management it can make a massive difference especially from a commercial side and at the end of the day i truly believe that everyone who's in hospitality and everyone who is in especially in hotels the most them they really like to be there i mean everyone says hey i really wanted to be in hospitality but at the end of the day everyone is there to make profit because otherwise you're going to be an institute where you're just going to break even at the end of the year there are not that many so at the end at the end of the year everyone still needs to have a plus and a green number so therefore what happens do you think when a revenue manager is isolated from operations because now we speak a lot of hey a review manager should be in operations because this this and this but what happens when a revenue manager is isolated from operations operations what's the biggest risk there oh it happens often because a lot of times you have centralized revenue management offices right where the revenue manager is in another state and they may be supporting you know 14 15 18 properties that are scattered and it's making it difficult or impossible to visit those properties we spoke about communication right you know making sure that there's open communication it is making sure that our gms also communicate and provide feedback and feel comfortable and there's a stigma that there's a silo between the different departments if there's a silo something's wrong it should not be happening it needs to be broken and everybody needs to be working everybody needs to be aligned and again i think that happens by over communicating and what i have encouraged my revenue managers to do is you don't have to wait for the weekly revenue call right you get the report that is published in the morning your daily revenue recap call the gm paid him a compliment right start with just by talking about those positive things that you see happening at the property don't necessarily end with the sales team also so what that's going to do is that's going to help ensure open communication and dialogue this way it makes it easier for the revenue manager to understand and for that communication the other thing that i encourage revenue managers to do carefully and with a grain of salt is to take a look at the reviews what are the guests saying about the hotel go to the hotel website maybe visit one or two otas and again carefully use that to say what's happening at the property so that you can understand from the guest perspective what's going on and i think i've found that to be very beneficial because you know we may be looking to push rates and there may be a elasticity point where that you know where maybe we're stretching it because the asset is you know at the time where it needs renovation and if you're looking at you know a lot of comments that reflects on that age of the asset you may have to reconsider what your strategy is right so again just something else to another tool that we could use to you know kind of plug ourselves into operations i it's it's one thing i just it's keep spinning in my hat from this sentence you said it's like the revenue manager gives a compliment to the gm i think that really shows what the evolution has been from a revenue manager because i think when you look 15 20 years back i mean even even if you look five six years back it's the gm was going to tell the review manager hey you did well there and and it would never it wouldn't happen that often that it would be the other way around so therefore i think that that that's that few words really indicates what has been the growth of a revenue manager within the commercial side of of a property which is very interesting to me typing in numbers and now being able to give a compliment to someone else i mean you can always give a compliment but i think the relationship very much changed over the years our vp of operations would do you know site or hotel visits he would visit the hotels check in with the gms and i had a missed call it went to voicemail i checked my voicemail and he said jason no need to call back but i just want to let you know i just left this hotel general manager is very happy with what you're doing i looked at the star report everything looks great great job you know very quick call it was a voicemail and gives you a boost it makes motivates you and you're appreciative and you're looking and you're like wow this is great and i learned from that not just from that but what you know me getting that from our vp what would it be like for our team to give those to our gms those you know random calls recognizing the positive things that are happening because too often people just focus on you know negative trends we need to compliment when compliments are earned and deserved and i speak to a lot of people within the company i work for and do a lot of review managers and one thing i always notice is the fact that i think it's the behavior of a revenue manager generally speaking we are a lot of times we are problem solvers and when there is a problem we're going to solve it and by being very focused as a problem solver you often forget to see all the things that goes great because you see this tiny thing which can be improved and therefore i really like this one that it's to sometimes highlight the others as well i mean we still can solve problems when we give a compliment absolutely and what would you say for for within the next five years where do you think revenue manager or commercial leaders would spend the most time on i mean the last few years went in terms of evolution in this this working environment went like totally mental sometimes if you look at the change what is your take on the next five years a lot of things happening i think one of the key pieces that's going to happen or key focus at least in the next 12 to 24 months is data what is the data leak right so i i recently started taking ai leadership classes and it's it's been great and i didn't you know i was hoping to get i'm getting everything i wanted from it but i'm able to connect some of the dots and it makes a lot of sense they they speak about clean data and and making sure that it all makes sense so for us we have hotels have data in excel we have data in word documents we have data all over the place and they're in you know different you know who's holding something in one file versus on the cloud versus you know 10 other places i think revenue managers are actually going to be charged with building that centralized data warehouse that lake so that as hotel owner operators management companies start adapting to a ai type of resource for their organization they're going to be able to tap into that data and it's going to be clean and it's going to be ready to pipe in some type of api integration and then we could start using different formats to extract that data into whether it be a chat and asking a question or some type of dashboard so i think that's happening and i know in some organizations it's happening right now as we speak i think the revenue manager being accustomed to different you know types of data and excel files and all was really poised really really well positioned to help lead that charge and there may be some crossover where it's not just revenue management there's operational things that are happening too where that revenue manager or revenue leader may assist in some of those special projects yeah and this does me think of something else and like saying all this and what a review manager nowadays does if you can rephrase the job title of a revenue manager what would you call it that's a great question well you know what you got me there but my my son one day asked me dad what do you do okay and i said you know i'm a revenue manager he says well what do you mean you're what does that mean i help people achieve their goals so whether you're called a revenue manager a vp of revenue a commercial strategist what we do is we help people achieve their budgets right their financial goals being that bridge that person to help achieve that goal that's what i enjoy doing and i love what i do and i told my son in the same sentence i don't work because i enjoy i love what i do i'm very passionate about it helping people working with people being that problem solver like you mentioned earlier right love doing that it's that gratification that we get and then being able to track the success of what we did or say you know what we need to rinse wash repeat until we find what that right solution is no 100% agree and in terms of the job title i mean i always said i don't care about my job title it only cares what i do and what my job description is i mean that's more important than the title there i know that in this world especially with linkedin and everything it's it's nice to have a title which which where people think of hey this could be someone for us so from from a career perspective i get it but from a personal perspective i think that's completely different that goes back to branding like you said right everyone's got their personal brand and you know we do live in a in a world where that title on linkedin or any in that corporate environment does mean what your next what your trajectory does look like so i think this case it's it's maybe connecting two dots for myself like we we are building a personal brand out of ourselves and it's very similar to hotel because they are building a personal brand for themselves as well and they and people will think about hey i need x person and i'm going to look for this job title and i need x hotel and i'm looking for this hotel which is which interests me always that there's so much overlap between a lot of things then i think two last questions and one of them is is there a mind shift that the industry needs to make in your eyes for the next and we're starting to talk about five years then you correct me already to 12 to 14 months which i think suits better especially in the current environment we are because everything goes so fast but is there a mind shift that the industry still needs to make about revenue management yes it is technology is great but you still need people to develop the strategy so there are people there who again there's a lot of buzz about ai right and then ai changing things and then you know what that's going to do to the revenue management role and position we cannot put that out to pasture where nowhere we're not close to doing that some people think that it is there i will again go back and remind everybody that if you want you can today turn on auto publish on your revenue management system and you can allow it to to revenue manage on your behalf right but you still it would not be the best thing to do because you need to still validate okay the anomalies you need to validate you know different demand shifts and you still need that person right so i i think that's one piece i think the other piece is as we're we hear about ai my advice for owners or for anybody you know entertaining it is what value is that bringing to rgi and what value is it bringing to noi is it improving the noi there's so many vendors out there that are trying to push products that doesn't necessarily show the value or show how the owner is going to benefit from it right and it's that's a you know we need to show efficiencies it's you know like you said cost rise right we need to be profitable so in order to do that we need to make sure that we're our technology investment is not just breaking even but bringing a true return on investment yeah and in the first part of here it's like at the end of the day a revenue management system or an ai model will still only execute the strategy you give it and the strategy still has to be made it can execute but like and that's what we spoke about earlier like this this execution part is i think the biggest thing that changed over the years that we don't have to spend much time to execute but we still have to think about a strategy to let be executed then then now i'm going to going to put you on the spot after after after this this chat we had do you have a question for me where do you see the the do you see ai and all of these things changing as quickly as the media and as quickly as linkedin and other social media outlets are pushing it or do you think that there's some time in there before it all before we really start to see the impacts on our day to day life within revenue management great question maybe i should have think about this question to ask you i think it differs a lot which kind of property properties we are talking about and the funny thing is i think for the smaller size properties for the independent properties it will go crazy fast and this because currently we have this superpower with ai to build systems without much investment so everyone can basically build a system which is going to result in a lot of good systems which are also going to result in a lot of lot of bad systems so will will that change very rapidly for the smaller properties i 100% believe in there do do i think that like the industry can already catch up with that i don't think so because it goes faster than than the adoption of an industry which has of course changed over the years but didn't change that rapidly and now a very very much change are pushed in a very small time frame which is i think my main concern here is that it's when you rush things and i think it's the same with with with the thing when when you increase speed the direction you take left or right will be having a bigger impact and when we increase the amount of possibilities to work with ai or or build different systems which can be the faster you make the decision the bigger the impact will be even if you choose the wrong one and that does something to the trust into those kind of systems into into revenue management into a lot of things and i think that's that's going to be having an impact the upcoming years on on a lot of different things because it puts everything in a different perspective on the other hand a lot of things are already changing which also makes it harder to point the direction where the change was wrong because if you do four changes at the same time i mean which which one of the cards you played was the wrong one so we going into this direction where a lot of change are following each other like very rapidly which also makes it harder to circle back and which change was actually wrong and therefore i think for this bigger properties it will slightly slow down because they are i think a little bit more conscious a bit more careful in the directions and the strategy they choose because they also have more time of the brand awareness they have instead of a smaller property which has to be a little quick fish and swim swim through everything so i think there are two different parts but i'm very curious to see where we are not even in five years but where we are in like 18th of march 2027 and especially for the independent branch independent size properties because it can go very well for some of them but it can also be on the other side and think then if we circle back if you have a revenue manager and you want to invest in ai then make sure that you have someone you can trust to guide you along the line because making a decision from out of nowhere it's like hey this looks cool is not always the best i mean it can go well and then even here if you circle back to the fact where hey what are the risks involved then a revenue manager can also tell you about the risks involved in choosing a revenue management system or an ai tool to let your prices do their thing because at the end of the day i think it's a human brain who makes decisions on the risk we are willing to take and how much risk we are there to take i mean that's basically how a human works absolutely we're not going to climb a mountain if we are scared of it because we found the risk to hide that we injure ourselves and i think that's the same here however i think we feel that we are going to be forced to make decisions on a very quick base without holding back breathe once and then look at hey what's the potential risk of the change we can do hopefully that answers your question absolutely a very big thanks jason for being here i found it a very insightful conversation i think i connected some dots in my mind as well which might not be connected before for everyone hopefully you enjoyed listening you can add us on linkedin if you want to have a conversation afterwards or you have questions and feel free thank you thank you for having me