Transcript
Introduction
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another Matt Talk. This week I have someone dialing in from the other side of the planet who is working on Mews, I wanted to get her opinion on what's happening with the role of revenue management and customer relationship management. Rebecca is joining me from Surfers Paradise. That's I think what the city is called, but maybe you should introduce the hotel and like what your background is.
Yeah, absolutely. So, yes, I'm Bec. So we are a resort in Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast, Australia.
Is that the actual name of the town?
Surfers Paradise. Yeah.
So good. So good.
Yeah. That's our suburb. So the resort I work for is called Paradise Resort. So we're a fairly well-known family resort here on the Gold Coast.
Chapter
Rebecca's journey at the resort
Very big on domestic travel really. I've been at the resort for a long time. I've been here since 2010. Originally, yeah, it was meant to be just a short term casual job.
A year off from uni, the food and beverage team with like no knowledge of the industry at all. Last resort jumped out to me. It was one of the first ads I saw that didn't ask for years of experience for an entry-level job. If I remember right, the ad said something like experience not necessary, but the right attitude is.
And since then it's really just been a bit of a whirlwind, sort of blinked and it's fifteen years later and here I am. I've spent a lot of time in the reservations department. I was a reservations manager for a long time prior to moving into the resort's first full-time revenue manager role.
Wow. So when you started in food and beverage, was it like the breakfast shift or what was your first job?
It was the old buffet breakfast shift, which has also changed a lot. We did breakfast, tending and yeah, basically it's actually been really cool having been here for this long. We have a lot of staff at the resort that have been here for a long time. Always a good sign. But the physical changes as well as cultural changes and everything within the property in that time have been awesome to see. And I'm actually glad I've been here to keep up with everything because I think if I was in new staff, I'd be now trying to learn it all over again. I just don't know how I'd do it.
And then in the fifteen years, has the tech stack remained relatively stable or have you changed tech stack very often?
Changed a lot. Yes. Changed heaps. I would say most of those changes came in the last five years. I think the first ten years I was here like we were on quite an outdated PMS. And once we changed that, obviously, to Mews, it really started that flow on effect with the open integration. We could really just start using a lot more plugin software to just tick a lot more boxes and we're still going.
So if you think about, you really have seen every department in a hotel. Are you like, actually the guests are having the exact same experience as they had fifteen years ago when they walked in the door?
Look, I think a little bit of both applies. I think it really does transform the guest experience in terms of a convenience perspective. I think our overarching goal at the resort, which is really to provide that, you know, those cherished family memories and the whole experience of enjoying time with the kids and activities and all that, that's all still there but there's just so much less hurdles for the guests to jump through at the moment. Now that we've got QR codes literally scattered all around the property. So if they want something to eat, they have to walk two meters and scan a QR code, not go from the pool all the way back up to the cafe, line up for five minutes and order.
So just little things like that, you know.
And then if I scan a QR code at my at the pool, the food comes to me then.
Yeah. Love that. Cocktails by the pool. Absolutely love that. And, you know, mom and dad sitting by the pool watching their kids
Chapter
QR codes as a sales booster in hotels
in the water park. Like, what more can you ask for?
So good. You were voted the best family resort, I think, thirteen years running. And I was thinking, yeah, yeah, that's all. Like, I'm sure that's fake.
Like, they can't be. How is that possible? But then I went on TikTok and I was like, I got it now because I started watching these videos about what you guys do and I think it's actually really special. And can you maybe share what makes you the best family resort for so many years running?
Yeah, absolutely. So staying up to date and relevant is very important in doing that. Like, we have a really strong return guest database. We have a lot of repeat visitors.
You know, we sort of aim for families with kids zero to twelve, and hopefully they're coming here for their annual holiday every year, and hopefully they're not going somewhere else to try somewhere new because we want them back here at the resort. So, you know, we need to keep our values the same, but we always need to be offering them something new, giving them a reason to return to the property. And so much of that can be credited to the creativity within other departments at the resort. Like our entertainment team is perpetually evolving and changing.
And then of course it's up to our marketing team and Amelia who is our TikTok queen. You would have seen her featuring on a lot of those videos. Yes.
You know, it's up to them to get the word out there and show everyone what we've done, what we've been spending time on and what they can look forward to for the next visit.
Chapter
TikTok for hotels. Does it work?
Because I, my generation and I think you're a bit younger than me, but like still I feel like the millennial generation. Every time I say like, oh, you should be on TikTok and we should be on TikTok, asked the marketing team like, why are we not on TikTok? And people are like, oh, no, I don't want be on TikTok. It scares me or it's a trap or. Actually I went to your profile and you have thousands of followers profile and there seems to be some magic that you do there. Is that translating into bookings for you?
Yeah. Well, I think definitely like the reach we get on TikTok, it engages a younger audience. And I think the other thing that it does better than, you know, an email or just a singular social media post can do is it's really conveying our brand personality. Amelia, who's featuring in a lot of those videos, she's silly, she's fun, She's really embodying the feel and meaning of Paradise Resort.
You know, we're always trying out new things to find out what our audience is going to engage with. It's building that community connection. Like, literally I work in the same office as Amelia, and we have kids coming and knocking on our door looking for her, begging to be in the next Paradise Resort's TikTok video, which is awesome. Personally, I can definitely sympathize with those people that you mentioned that don't wanna be on TikTok because it's scary because poor Amelia's coming in here looking for volunteers to be in videos, and we're all like, not, make don't make eye contact.
Don't make eye contact. But the fun loving staff and the kids that are here definitely get involved.
So your role's now revenue manager. What does that look like in a resort like yours? What does your day look like?
Honestly, and I think this is why I've been here for fifteen years, is that no two days are really the same at a resort like this. And I think at a lot of properties as well. You've got your standard parts of the day where you're looking at your pickup and your occupancy, you're adjusting your rates. But to be honest that's actually a relatively small part now of what we do.
The ADR is important. It's always going to be important. RevPAR is important too. But I think there are better things that you can do to really drive your resort revenue.
Like at the end of the day we have a multitude of departments here. A lot of them are revenue generating. So how can we work together, put together better offers to our customers or you know what avenues can we take even when the guest is here to upsell those products that we readily have available? We want the guests to do them.
We want them to enjoy themselves and enjoy their stay. So yeah, a lot of it is looking at what we can incorporate into packages, when we're best to put those packages out. So having a look at the data, seeing what that looks. Of course, a fun revenue management job that I'm sure we all do is working on our rate parity as well to try and get those direct bookings stronger.
We want people coming direct. It's not just about cutting out the commissions, but it's about communicating with the customer and we can do that better pre-arrival if they book direct with us and we have all of their information at hand ready to go and we can communicate with them how we need to.
So what I hear is that you're saying, yes, you take care of the rate setting and the ADR and the RevPAR on the one side, but that's just a room revenue. But because you're a resort, your customers actually, you need to get the right customers in the door, but also the ones that are spending across the hotel. So are there other metrics that you look at besides ADR and RevPAR that show you that you're doing something right?
Chapter
Revenue per square meter as the new metric
Yeah. Yeah. We actually look more at average spend per guest, probably more so than RevPAR. Average spend per guest.
And recently we've sort of spent a bit of time looking at like total revenue per square metre of the resort as well, which is quite interesting. Like, we've been looking at the growth, you know, going back five, ten years to where we are now and also considering how we're going to keep evolving that in the future. So there's some of the metrics that we probably spend a bit more time looking at. Yeah, more so than the RevPAR.
I love that. Like you're the first hotelier that I've spoken to, and I've spoken to many hoteliers throughout the years. And I've actually said average revenue per square meter is a thing we do because I've talked about it a lot. But finding like the one person that actually has reporting around it, it's so powerful.
It's something that we talk about a lot and I'll I'll credit our GM David Brook here. So he talks about it a lot and probably just in the last few months we've gone, okay, well, it's what we're striving to do. So we actually need to start reporting on this metric and using this as our driving factor. And that too, like that really it incorporates everybody. You know, we're pulling in other departments to see how and where we can you know, whether it's including them in packages or just working with them for better revenue generation in their areas.
Yeah, because we need everyone involved to bump that number up, not just a room.
One hundred percent. And if we look back at the room revenue side of I think you're testing out a revenue management system at the moment. How do you go about selecting a system? Like, what's the process for you to pick the right system? Because everyone has AI, everyone does dynamic pricing. It must be so hard to filter out the best ones.
It's yeah, it has been a long journey to getting where we are now. I guess you could say we have been a little bit stubborn in the past by not using an RMS until this point. And it's not really so much that right now we've made the conscious sudden decision that we need to sign up to one, but more so we're hoping it's just the end of a very long research period. We've done a lot of demos and a lot of trials and I just don't think until this point we'd found the one that suits our property. Like we are fairly unique and we want to take all those things into account as well when we're looking at revenues. Yeah, I think we certainly haven't rushed.
What was the biggest like challenge that you found in the search that led to the search becoming so long?
To be honest, I think a lot of the systems that we demoed and trialed, they just put a lot of weight on your competitor set and exactly what your competitors are doing. Some are even asking for a direct weighting. If competitor A wants to, you know, ends up moving up their prices 50 dollars how much do you want to move your price up? And for us, that's probably a feature that works for a lot of properties and that's definitely understandable given the nature of our property.
Like our comp set is a little bit more limited and even within that comp set there's some really big variances between the properties. So we don't always want to be following the pack or just following the trends. Like sometimes we want to be setting them and of course other times during the year that flips entirely. Some of our competitors can tap into markets that we can't.
So they might be pushing high rates and strong occupancy when unfortunately we're not. So it's definitely a factor to consider sometimes, but for us it definitely isn't nearly as important as it might be to other properties.
As you said that you were hesitant to start looking at revenue management systems, was it because your resort is so specific or just you didn't feel that the artificial intelligence was good enough at that point?
I think early on, so, you know, even going back a couple of years, I think the artificial intelligence, when we were trialling it, it was good, but it definitely has come through leaps and bounds in that time. I definitely didn't trust it, I guess, to make those decisions. And look, that partially might have been me being new to the role as well, but I can see the differences between then and now with the tweaks that it's making, the reasons it's giving you for those tweaks. But also I feel like I, especially for the system we're trialling now, there's almost a level of control that we have. So, you know, we can set those parameters, not just your floor and your ceiling prices, but how it's moving within there, when it's moving within there, where do you want to sit compared to your market, you know, what is your target and how quickly do you usually get there. So it's asking all the right questions to, I guess, spit out hopefully all the right answers.
Chapter
Upselling with AI
And once you've got the booking and then it's all about how do we now get them to spend money across all of the resorts, facilities, how does a hotel work around up sells or cross sells of the different facilities? How do you create that culture?
We have a few different things that we use. Obviously in the past, like, you know, we've done every upsell incentive under the sun from a staffing perspective. So from a reservations background, we've certainly tried everything in relation to that. And our staff is still obviously encouraged to upsell. We do that probably more so through rapport building and understanding what the customer wants when we're talking to them more than a direct, Hey guys, today we're going to upsell a buffet breakfast and match that.
But we're definitely using our tech a lot more to upsell now than we were five years ago. So we actually have a system in place. It's automated. So it's just doing at the moment room upgrades, early check-ins, late check-outs.
It does have the capability to do a little bit more but we're just starting with those three things and it's an AI that basically it reads our availability, it reads the customer's booking and sees what nightly rate they're paying. And it might say, okay, well we've got fifty rooms available so for just ten percent of their nightly rate I'm going to offer them an early check-in. And we still control the parameters on that too, but it's automated. They're live offers and it's how do I put by the results.
Like some of the late check-outs and things that it has sold, we probably never would have dreamed to ask for as a person. But people are happy to pay it.
No shame and embarrassment, but like a computer, no shame.
Yeah, exactly. And I guess that's the thing, like you never know until you ask. So the computer doesn't mind asking, but you know, it is harder when you're a human and you put your own thoughts and projections onto what person in front of you might be willing to pay for something, but you don't actually know what it is.
Love that. Are you willing to share which technology partner you've selected for that?
Yeah, so that is called ROOMDEX.
Where are they based?
I don't know them.
They're run by WebBeds actually. They're as close to a set and forget as you can really get. Like it just works in the background. You can set up your exclusions or what offers you want to go out.
And yeah, it really does the hard work for you. Connects with Mews. So, you know, if a guest accepts the early check-in, it'll drop in. The charge will drop into Mews.
Happy days.
In the beginning that was painful always when a system was upgrading and then it would create a task for a human to do it. They're like, that makes no sense. I'm so glad that modern integration partners actually just pushed the category up,
and that's just one of the softwares, like I mentioned earlier, switching to Mews and having that, you know, ability for the open connection that has really made a difference. So obviously, yeah, we use ROOMDEX for that purpose, but throughout the booking journey, we also have the products in bookable services in Mews as well. We try really hard to not offer too much. I think that you could definitely get a real situation overwhelming for a customer. And I know when I'm booking something, if I get to the end of my booking and twenty things pop up, I'm like, oh, stop it. No, I'm not interested. But if three or four things pop up, then you might be more inclined to at least stop and look at them and have a think about it.
Yeah. And you said that you're doing mostly domestic business, but then in Australia, like it's so big. Do people fly or do they drive to your hotel mostly?
A lot of drive market are visiting us. Yeah. A little bit of both. You know, the majority of our customers are coming from New South Wales and Victoria, which is sort of our closest states and Queensland. Sorry, I forget not everyone's gonna know what the states of Australia are. But, yeah, a lot of people are driving.
And then they bring their car. So do I'm assuming you have a giant car park. How do you manage that?
It's unfortunately not quite giant enough. We do have a car park here, absolutely. And there's quite a large number of spaces, but not enough for every single room to have a space. So that is something that we've changed recently as well with how we're handling the car parking bookings.
So just recently and full credit to the team at Mews, particularly Tom and Ben, who really got us across the line on this one. We've actually just changed to using the parking as a bookable service within Mews and it really has made a massive, massive difference. Like I'm very glad we made the change. Handling those bookings used to be an enormous hassle for us.
Like our reservations team would be inundated because we, you know, our marketing team could get the word out that you need to book your car parking but you have to contact us to do it. So guests are ringing, they're emailing, they're messaging on social media, whatever they need to do in order to book their car park. Because we don't have enough for everyone, we couldn't really put it out there as a product for guests to book themselves because we had no way to stop them when the car park was full. So being a bookable service, fully inventory managed now, and of course, we do have the option to do a bit of revenue.
I'm so glad you said that. That's my next question. Do the rates fluctuate still now?
At the moment, it is flat. It is a hot topic of conversation, though, because obviously at certain times of the year, we have all 360 rooms full and other times we don't. So obviously it's in a lot higher demand than it normally is. So I would suggest that's the direction where we're heading in at the moment.
Chapter
How to get rid off queues at check-in
And I'm imagining as a resort hotel, there are peak times at the reception and there's lulls that you have. When is the busiest time of day or week at the reception and how does your team cope with that?
Busiest times would definitely be Friday and Saturday afternoons. Friday sort of from about that three thirty onwards mark when the kids have finished school and people are coming for their weekends away. It used to be an absolute nightmare. Like going back five years, we we have a 7/11 service station about a hundred meters down the road on a main road and we would have the highway backed up until there with people trying to turn into the resort and queuing in their cars to get to the front of reception to get out and come and then stand in another queue for half an hour to check-in.
And that is because we had so much trouble with a multitude of things before they arrived, whether it was just communicating basic information to them or literally just taking their payments. And yeah, that's another thing that's been solved really since we changed to Mews. Like we very rarely have a line up now. It might be three or four people at most and we have two or three receptionists instead of five or six like we used to.
People are checking in online. They're all fully paid before they get here. You know, the technology movements have let us communicate everything they need to know. They have six inclusions.
Perfect. We've sent them all of their codes for their inclusions or whatever the case might be before they're here.
And then as guests are checked in, I've seen resorts like Disneyland, for example, where you get their bracelets where you can charge things. How do you charge? Do you charge to account or do you pay at the restaurants?
What's the set. Also a hot topic of conversation here.
The exact current moment, we've actually turned off our room charge features because we on check-out, a huge holdup was people arguing their room charge bill and the, you know, the physical receipt that you had to sign for, the number of times that our receptionist would have to go through the daily bag of finances and receipts to find it. You know, wasn't digitised. They were physically having to show the customer their signature on a ten dollars receipt to prove that they had that glass of wine on that night. And it was probably costing us more in staff time handling those issues than we were actually making off, you know, having the room charge function there.
So we also debated, like we all absolutely love the idea of wristbands. In a perfect world. We had this wonderful plan for how we might use that, including access into certain areas and so on, but it just hasn't quite worked for us yet with what we've got. And to add in another layer is, you know, those QR codes that I mentioned before incorporate another system again into ordering.
So your online ordering is another system again on top of your POS. So we haven't managed to solve that one across all platforms just yet.
But honestly, like most of times in hotel, I just have my wrist and like, it's faster to just tap that against any device and having to write it down on a piece of paper and get charged to the reception, then having to check the bill. So I think payments is innovating at such a fast pace that actually it doesn't really matter how you offer to pay because you always have a digital device with you.
Exactly. You know, ten years ago, we never would have dreamed of turning off room charge because we thought that that drove so much of our revenue when people were sitting poolside because they didn't have to leave their wallets by the pools. They could just come up and sign for something. But no one goes anywhere without their phones now anyway. So sort of once we realized it actually wasn't going to impact our revenue generation all that much, we sort of were pretty quick to make the decision.
My last question. What is the thing that gets you really excited about the future of technology? Like, what's the thing that you're excited to test out and get your hands dirty with?
Really good question. So I think obviously we've just signed up. Well, we're on a trial period, I should say, with an RMS and I am really excited for that to take on the daily changes to rates. A huge challenge I have is that we have thirty different room types at the resort.
So I really, you know, as a manual process I know I'm not capitalising on the revenue that we could be earning with the variations between those rooms and as they sell out at different paces. And so that's something that I'm really excited about. But just as excited as I am about, you know growing that revenue via using that system, I'm actually just really excited to not be doing that part of the job for you know potentially an hour and a half to two hours a day. We've got so many projects that we want to work on here that you know, if I have that time back I can work on those things.
Chapter
Building a revenue culture
So staff training sort of across the board is a massive one for us and really, really building that revenue culture within the property and that's something else that our GM and I have spoken a lot about is making sure everyone from the ground up is on the same page. Like we have different departments but we are all working towards the same goal. So I think staff knowledge and not just them learning from us but also what can they teach us about what the feedback the guests are giving them, what they think is going to work. I think that two way relationship is really important and that's a big thing that I'm hoping to build on over the next twelve months and yeah, really get everything flowing hopefully cohesively within a revenue culture perspective across the resort.
Love that. Thank you so much for joining me today. I've really, really enjoyed listening to you. It sounds like you're already living in the future of revenue management, which is like thinking about total revenue on the hotel. I'm excited to actually continue to do a catch up in a couple of months actually to see once you roll out the revenue management, what actually you've been able to do with that extra time because I think it's so valuable to get that time back.
Yep. All right. That's perfect. Now I'll be held accountable. I have to make sure I do something to give you my time.
Nice. Thank you so much.
Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.
