| London, August 21, 2009: As witnessed with the Intercontinental Hotel, Crowne Plaza in Venice on 15 August 2009, human errors can cause significant loses in revenue when updating rates online. The fiasco at the Crowne Plaza: rooms were offered for €0.01 a night, an incident that can happen to any hotel manually updating rates and inventory online. For many years hoteliers have been using various systems, like PMS, CRS and GDS, to perform different hospitality functions in an organized and efficient manner. However, when selling rooms online, many hotels still resort to manual updates that can lead to gross mistakes. Often enough existing automated systems available do not protect enough to prevent wrong data entry. RateTiger, an online channel management specialist has been advising hoteliers since 2001 how manual updates can lead to costly errors. A statement issued by RateTiger’s COO Sascha Hausmann said, “The €0.01 per room incident experienced by the Crowne Plaza is a pure example of how human errors can have a major impact on revenue. With the employment of a channel management system the revenue manager would have been able to ensure all rates were accurate across all channels before making the relevant updates.” “Systems like ours allow hotels to set a minimum rate per hotel room to ensure typing errors are detected. As the online market place evolves, hoteliers are struggling to keep up, remain agile and control rates. This human error has occurred many times before and without utilising technology to simplify inventory and rate distribution, it is very likely to occur more frequently across the world as the number of channels that need attention increases.” “Hoteliers really need to think sensibly during these times, to ensure revenues are optimized. Making mistakes like this will not only have an impact for the hotel itself but will also send the economy into further disarray,” concludes Sascha. This case is a compelling example as to why hotels and the industry at large should give relevant importance to channel management solutions.  About
RateTiger: RateTiger, by eRevMax Inc., has been a leader in online distribution management tools since 2001 and continues to pioneer new technologies for the hospitality industry. Operating in 60 countries and 415 cities across the world RateTiger has become the industry-wide benchmark for managing online distribution. A Platinum European Seal of E-Excellence for the marketing of innovation award-winner, the RateTiger product portfolio enables hoteliers to switch from a time-consuming and complicated multi-channel process to a single point of entry to the market. RateTiger is headquartered in New Jersey, U.S., EMEA HQ in London, UK, technical development center in India and six offices in mainland Europe. RateTiger employs more than 170 people across the globe. RateTiger is rapidly expanding across the European and American markets. For more information please visit http://www.ratetiger.com |