Events with IDeaS: De Vere Whites and Daresbury Park Revolutionize Hotel Revenue Approach to Football and Festivals
In the United Kingdom, there are no two phenomena more popular and more likely to affect hotels via the great movement of masses of un-contracted bookings, than music and football. Throughout spring and summer the world’s greatest musicians converge on a seemingly endless variety of music festivals up and down the country, drawing visitors from the four points of the compass, and in a country whose sporting loyalty would be hard to rival anywhere in the world, distance is no obstacle to loyal football fans willing to make the trek both to home and away games.
Two hotels that know this scenario better than most in the UK, and the challenges it creates, are De Vere Venues Whites and Daresbury Park, both part of the prestigious De Vere Venues portfolio of hotels, resorts and conference venues. Set against an array of inspiring backdrops ranging from modern cityscapes to wild Scottish Highlands, De Vere Venues offers the perfect location for any business and leisure event.
Daresbury Park is one of the closest hotels to the site of the annual Creamfields Music Festival – one of the largest electronic music festivals in the UK – and, similarly, Whites is the official hotel of the Bolton Wanderers Football Club; fully integrated into the Reebok Stadium, home ground of the club. Having been an IDeaS Revenue Optimization client since 2006, the IDeaS V5i Revenue Management solution is installed in all properties under the De Vere Collections and De Vere Village brands, as well as four De Vere Venues hotels: Shaw Ridge in Wiltshire, St David’s Park in Flintshire, Whites in Bolton and Daresbury Park in Cheshire. As a result of an internal change of leadership in the corporate revenue management team, an opportunity arose for an expert remedial workshop delivered by IDeaS to the Revenue Managers from the four key De Vere Venues hotels.
The new Head of Revenue was keen to ensure that IDeaS V5i was firmly embedded with the system being used optimally, ensuring that hotels were capitalizing on every revenue opportunity whenever possible. During the workshop IDeaS supported each team to explore the unique benefits of full utilization of the system within each of their individual hotels. While IDeaS V5i provides enormous value managing ‘normal’ periods across all hotels, Whites and Daresbury Park both presented unique opportunities to take advantage of the systems ability to optimize unique events brought about due to their geographical location or proximity to one-off special events.
Particular success was experienced at Whites where the IDeaS V5i Revenue Management solution provided critical functionality that allowed the hotel’s Revenue Manager access to accurate demand forecasting and pricing functionality that was in line with the football season, and match days in particular.
According to Laura Thompson, Revenue Analyst for Whites, “Since the training session, with a far greater level of engagement of IDeaS V5i within the hotel, I have seen first hand the accuracy and benefits of the system and can not believe we had not used it more in the past! Compared with last year our Occupancies in August, September and October were up 7 percent, 11 percent and 7.4 percent respectively.”
Thompson goes on to add, “As match tickets do not go on sale till a few weeks before each game, and most people won’t book a room until they have secured a ticket, last minute pick-up can go crazy so the Last Room Value output is especially helpful when it comes to the football. The IDeaS V5i forecasting reports are also incredibly useful for comparing booking pace, occupancy and rates match by match, year on year and then planning for the future.”
“I have complete faith in IDeaS V5i based on its incredible accuracy in forecasting, along with the reduction in man hours managing Revenue which we have seen since the workshop. Consequently, due to the significant increases in occupancy as a result of using the system, we can now spend our time strategically focusing on bringing our Average Daily Rate (which has suffered as a result of not using the system) back to what it used to be.”
Daresbury Park faced a similar situation, though instead of weekly events they faced one very big annual event – The Creamfields Music Festival. Creamfields is the most important date on the calendar for Daresbury Park as, it presents a unique opportunity to optimize revenue across the board every year.
According to Nicola Trew, Revenue Manager for Daresbury Park, “Creamfields is the single most important event for the hotel, as there are not many large scale events in the area and it presents a great opportunity to optimize our revenue potential not only for rooms but also for additional services such as Food and Beverage.”
For Nicola, the precision of IDeaS V5i reporting functionalities have become essential in determining correct pricing and forecasting for the event well ahead of time. “During Creamfields demand is obviously extremely high, so determining pricing and length of stay requirements well ahead of time is critical. With IDeaS V5i, we regularly use the Performance Comparison Report to compare our booking pace with last year and we are able to see exactly where we are, breaking down our bookings by individual market segments which is fantastic!”, she adds.
Trew goes on to add, “Increasingly, we have seen both the organizers and bands booking with us for up to three weeks, which means we have even less rooms to sell, so combining the IDeaS V5i demand forecasts, with IDeaS V5i reporting, along with the Best Available Rate (BAR) module means that we are always confident not only that we are pricing optimally but also that we are looking after our shoulder nights and protecting ourselves during peak nights”
And the results speak for themselves, “Compared with last year, we have seen an 8% increase in Occupancy, a 47% increase in Average Daily Rate and a 64% increase in RevPar for the Creamfields event, which represents a significant increase”, said Ms Trew. Daresbury Park is hoping to further capitalize on demand next year and continue growing their revenues during this event by maximizing the utilization of IDeaS V5i.
As a result of the workshop provided by IDeaS, the hotel revenue managers at Whites and Daresbury Park not only have the confidence that they are maximizing their revenues through the year, but they also have even greater assurance of the benefits that IDeaS V5i can provide during Special Events, with Creamfields and Football match days testament to this. Utilizing the IDeaS V5i modules in the optimal way including, correct configuration of Special Events, regular Forecast Validation and utilizing Forecast Validation and Performance Comparison Reports resulted in accurate demand forecasts providing the hotel with the optimal Last Room Value decision and BAR recommendations. IDeaS V5i has helped the four De Vere Venues remain competitive in an increasingly tough marketplace.
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