Group business has returned. The outlook for the U.S. market is projected to reach 110.2% of 2019 levels in 2023 and 133.3% in 2024.
However, the good news also comes with caveats. Markets have shifted, and hotel asset managers can’t simply apply what worked in the past to optimize their portfolio’s revenue and performance moving forward.
This article will explore the new challenges preventing hotel owners from maximizing their portfolio’s value and how you can overcome them.
Hotel Asset Management Challenges in 2023
With a shortage of seasoned sales professionals, hotel asset managers have to do more with less to balance resources across their entire portfolio. To improve long-term performance, address these critical challenges:
1. Identify portfolio properties that need attention
When you have multiple hotel properties under your reporting umbrella, each using its own software and metrics, it takes time and effort to unify the data to compare apples to apples in a single view.
However, without the ability to quickly identify the top and bottom performers, hotel asset managers struggle to create actionable strategies. Knowing where your properties stand can inform whether to ride the momentum and replicate the successes or when to implement remediation programs.
2. Understand trends that affect your portfolio properties
Market conditions are changing rapidly, and you must keep your fingers on the pulse to deploy sales resources successfully. It’s hard enough to identify market trends for one property, let alone the big-picture view for an entire portfolio that operates in various markets and regions.
Timely data on all properties, their comp sets, and markets can help asset managers to capitalize on relevant trends. A dashboard that displays the insights in one screen for a bird’s-eye view of the market will quickly guide you to the vital business within the market.
3. Know which accounts to focus your sales resources on
Many hotels are restructuring their sales departments after the pandemic, including functioning with smaller teams. Old tactics no longer work in today’s environment if you want to maximize the revenue potential of each property.
One challenge hotels face is the limited resources available for prospecting outside of inbound RFPs. These inbounds may not be a good fit for the venue and according to hoteliers, have a much lower probability of closing.
To optimize your portfolio’s performance, you must proactively build relationships with high-value accounts across all properties. As such, you need insights on top accounts for your entire portfolio to inform your resource allocation decisions.
4. Stay ahead in the shifting competitive landscape
If you don’t proactively identify top accounts and gain market share, you risk falling behind. You need all the data from every property in one central place and in a format that allows you to compare them to influence timely, data-driven decisions.
Shifts in the competitive landscape during the past couple of years mean you can’t rely on pre-pandemic internal metrics alone — you must bring in current data on each property’s comp set and market to identify new opportunities.
Overcoming Hotel Asset Management Challenges with Data Analytics
The meetings and events industry is changing rapidly, and you must quickly evaluate opportunities for all properties to make timely decisions. How can you keep pace with the market?
First, you need access to data from every property in one place. A dashboard format allows you to compare the metrics without logging onto multiple systems, copy-and-pasting the information onto spreadsheets, and spending hours mining through the data.
Then, you need access to a robust database and analytics capabilities to see your data in the context of your comp sets and markets, so you can best allocate sales resources to shift group business share.
Sounds like a tall order? It is… until now.
Knowland’s new tool, Portfolio Capture, is designed to help hoteliers manage a portfolio of hospitality assets efficiently and effectively. Use your portfolio property dataset to view top and bottom performers, compare KPIs, and capture top accounts to boost the ROI of your capital expenditures.
