Technology- and Internet-savvy consumer behaviors have fundamentally changed the way in which revenue is managed. This online course encourages those schooled or experienced in traditional revenue management to elevate and fine-tune their approach to price manipulation, length of stay, and demand and availability control. This curriculum will prepare students to succeed in this new, highly competitive hospitality landscape.

You'll investigate individual cases and strategies used by the world's top airlines, casinos, hotels and car rental businesses. Learn how these top companies optimize their price setting and inventory control measures to generate maximum profit and minimize systematic inefficiencies.

Whether you're preparing to create a proprietary revenue management system or use a commercially available revenue management system, the principles and techniques learned in this course will serve as a foundation.

Pricing strategy is the central component in your overall profit performance. This online course prepares you to anticipate the impact certain pricing decisions will have on consumer demand and thrive in a highly competitive environment.

You'll learn to measure demand sensitivity to your price changes, measure the overall impact and even analyze and improve upon your competitors' strategies. See how pricing strategies in economic declines can bring volatility and bring about a "price war" situation, like that of the airline industry. This course also provides the tools to conduct a break-even analysis, which is used to determine a baseline volume and price that will generate positive revenue.

Closely aligned with the break-even analysis is the concept of price elasticity, which is the measurement of change in demand as it relates to a change in price. By measuring demand sensitivity, running a break-even analyses and forecasting price elasticity you'll be able to develop a measured, data-driven approach to pricing strategy geared toward positive revenue generation and sustained profitability for your operation.

The course Price and Inventory Controls is required to be completed prior to starting this course.

Segmenting your customer base is critical to developing a variable pricing scheme. By identifying core groups of customers and their purchasing habits, you can target them accordingly by setting prices that will help you win their business over your competition. Without proper segmentation, however, dynamic pricing can backfire, which can alienate consumers and turn them into perpetual deal-seekers.

This course expands upon the central concepts in revenue management—RevPAR (Revenue Per Available Room) and RevPASH (Revenue Per Available Seat Hour)—with the goal of selling the right room or reserving the right table for the right person at the right time. Get your organization properly managing inventory and using market-based pricing to maximize revenue.

If you can achieve a workable segmentation and variable pricing scheme, you won't need to adjust prices as often. Many hotels and hospitality organizations have used stable prices to create a marketing advantage, by providing stable rates for customers who appreciate consistency. Finding the right mix in variability and stability in pricing, and setting upgrade policies, are what generate repeat business from happy customers and create an environment for sustained profitability.

Group events, conferences and negotiated business bookings frequently account for over 50% of hotel room reservations. This course will prepare you to develop your own data-driven, systematic approach to group pricing.

You'll also learn how to anticipate displacement—specifically how a property estimates the number of future arrivals that will have to be turned away when at capacity. Predicting transient business (non-group, individual business travelers) amid negotiated bookings is also a component when considering the effects of displacement on customer satisfaction.

Forecasting displacements and setting parameters for negotiating price will help you determine the number of rooms to allocate to each customer segment. Another key metric is win rate—the probability that a group will accept the quoted price—and the trade-offs to be made around profit margins.

Today's consumers rely less upon traditional travel agents and more on web-based research when booking travel. In this online course you'll learn to develop online strategies designed to improve your standing in Internet search results, called Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and increase your visibility to target customers.

Learn how to optimize your position on Internet search results and increase conversions: the moment when a search becomes a purchase. Online travel agencies are especially popular because they provide one-stop convenience and notifications for consumers searching for deals and promotional opportunities. The success of online travel agency is largely attributable to their marriage of leading-edge technology and a keen insight into consumer behavior patterns.

This session takes place June 13-16, 2022 on campus at the Cornell Hotel School in Ithaca, NY. Sessions run from 8:00am-5:00pm ET each day.

Days 1 and 2: Strategic and Competitive Pricing

Revenue management has historically been focused inward; you've used historical transaction data to generate a forecast and manage prices and inventory. As information has become more readily available, you need the ability to more directly model and take into account the pricing and inventory actions of your competitors when contemplating revenue management decisions. In this intensive session, you'll take a strategic and competitive look at revenue management and pricing decisions with a focus on both understanding the reactions of others as well as how to use today's tools to make pricing and inventory decisions to drive profitable revenue. Using a strategic pricing simulation, you'll develop an understanding of the interplay between pricing and digital marketing in competitive markets and refocus your efforts on profit versus revenue.

Days 3 and 4: Driving Profit Through Performance and Demand Management

Defining the “revenue performance” of a hotel has traditionally involved a series of benchmarking approaches like comparisons to last year; budget; forecast; and, of course, the competitive set. As the discipline evolves, performance metrics need to evolve as well. Metrics such as RevPAR Index will likely remain crucial for the foreseeable future. That said, the role of revenue management is to make tactical and strategic decisions to further the goals of a hotel or set of hotels, and these goals extend far beyond revenue maximization; in fact, some of these goals are actually counter to revenue maximization. In this session, you'll examine the often-competing goals of customer acquisition, customer retention, engagement and loyalty, and channel choice, along with the corresponding revenue management approaches. You'll also examine a “balanced scorecard” approach, which presents a much more comprehensive assessment of revenue performance. You'll leave equipped with the tools to excel in today's more active revenue management environment.

These sessions take place live on Zoom, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, from February 21-March 4, 2022. Sessions run from 10:00am-2:00pm ET each day.

Strategic and Competitive Pricing

Revenue management has historically been focused inward; you've used historical transaction data to generate a forecast and manage prices and inventory. As information has become more readily available, you need the ability to more directly model and take into account the pricing and inventory actions of your competitors when contemplating revenue management decisions. In this intensive session, you'll take a strategic and competitive look at revenue management and pricing decisions with a focus on both understanding the reactions of others as well as how to use today's tools to make pricing and inventory decisions to drive profitable revenue. Using a strategic pricing simulation, you'll develop an understanding of the interplay between pricing and digital marketing in competitive markets and refocus your efforts on profit versus revenue.

Driving Profit Through Performance and Demand Management

Defining the “revenue performance” of a hotel has traditionally involved a series of benchmarking approaches like comparisons to last year; budget; forecast; and, of course, the competitive set. As the discipline evolves, performance metrics need to evolve as well. Metrics such as RevPAR Index will likely remain crucial for the foreseeable future. That said, the role of revenue management is to make tactical and strategic decisions to further the goals of a hotel or set of hotels, and these goals extend far beyond revenue maximization; in fact, some of these goals are actually counter to revenue maximization. In this session, you'll examine the often-competing goals of customer acquisition, customer retention, engagement and loyalty, and channel choice, along with the corresponding revenue management approaches. You'll also examine a “balanced scorecard” approach, which presents a much more comprehensive assessment of revenue performance. You'll leave equipped with the tools to excel in today's more active revenue management environment.

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