4. Reservation Resources and Distribution Channels
4.1 CRS and GDS
Reservation sources and distribution channels are bread and butter for hospitality industry as the room sales is the major revenue source of this industry. The Global Distribution System (GDS), which was one of the first e-commerce companies dealing with B2B transactions, began in the airline industry in 1960s to keep track of flight schedule, availability and prices, then expanded to hospitality industry. GDS today is like a one-stop-store of travel products such as airline seats, hotel or other forms of accommodation, car rental, tickets of sports and theaters, etc. (Jones, 2008, p144), which provides all the information travel agents need. However, designed for the airline …show more content…
Each property in the chain has its own PMS, and CRS of the hotel chain needs to monitor room inventory in each PMS and tries to achieve the 100% occupancy. As the Worldwide distribution system, GDS receives the inventory and information of hotel rooms from CRS and gives access to numerous travel agents. CRS and GDS work together and play important roles in revenue management.
4.1.1 Seamless Connectivity of Real-Time Information
In 1989, the CRS and GDS began to exchange real-time information, which meant travel agents working through the GDS could see the same information that reservation agents working in the hotel chain’s Central Reservation Office (CRO) was able to see (Vallen & Vallen, 2013, p.117). The equivalence of information between CRO and travel agents saves amount of time and labour spending on manual information exchange, and further increases the working efficiency.
Through CRS, the changes of room rates, room status, etc. operated on PMS can be updated to GDS on which travel agents can retrieve the real-time price, information and make reservations. This seamless connectivity of real-time information helps hoteliers control the room rate of different types at different time for different segments to maximize the …show more content…
If reservations are made through GDS, the per-transaction fee is $10 to $15 per reservation; while via third party websites, the commission fee is 10-20% of the revenue generated among hotel franchises and 15-25% among independent hotels, and the websites also charge hotels from $0.25 to $2 by visitors’ every click on their hotels (Duran, 2015). For hotels that have a high star and set high rates, the commission fee of third party websites could be costly.
4.2.2 Interaction Between Guests and Managers
How to deal with guests’ reviews on third party websites is a challenge for hotel managers. The reviews provide people an opportunity to estimate the property before they make a reservation. A potential customer can turn to another hotel because of a negative review, or can turn to your hotel by the adorable reply of GM. Therefore, with the rise of third party websites, hotel managers need to estimate guests’ satisfaction, make remedies to guests’ disappointment, interact with their guests even after they leave the property to reduce the appearance and impact of negative online reviews.
Based on the wide range of marketing segments and abundant facilities of Avon City Hotel, Avon City Hotel can benefit from the combination use of CRS (only if Avon City Hotel is in a hotel franchise), GDS, OTA and other third party websites.
5. Reporting and Forecasting Requirements in
4.1 CRS and GDS
Reservation sources and distribution channels are bread and butter for hospitality industry as the room sales is the major revenue source of this industry. The Global Distribution System (GDS), which was one of the first e-commerce companies dealing with B2B transactions, began in the airline industry in 1960s to keep track of flight schedule, availability and prices, then expanded to hospitality industry. GDS today is like a one-stop-store of travel products such as airline seats, hotel or other forms of accommodation, car rental, tickets of sports and theaters, etc. (Jones, 2008, p144), which provides all the information travel agents need. However, designed for the airline …show more content…
Each property in the chain has its own PMS, and CRS of the hotel chain needs to monitor room inventory in each PMS and tries to achieve the 100% occupancy. As the Worldwide distribution system, GDS receives the inventory and information of hotel rooms from CRS and gives access to numerous travel agents. CRS and GDS work together and play important roles in revenue management.
4.1.1 Seamless Connectivity of Real-Time Information
In 1989, the CRS and GDS began to exchange real-time information, which meant travel agents working through the GDS could see the same information that reservation agents working in the hotel chain’s Central Reservation Office (CRO) was able to see (Vallen & Vallen, 2013, p.117). The equivalence of information between CRO and travel agents saves amount of time and labour spending on manual information exchange, and further increases the working efficiency.
Through CRS, the changes of room rates, room status, etc. operated on PMS can be updated to GDS on which travel agents can retrieve the real-time price, information and make reservations. This seamless connectivity of real-time information helps hoteliers control the room rate of different types at different time for different segments to maximize the …show more content…
If reservations are made through GDS, the per-transaction fee is $10 to $15 per reservation; while via third party websites, the commission fee is 10-20% of the revenue generated among hotel franchises and 15-25% among independent hotels, and the websites also charge hotels from $0.25 to $2 by visitors’ every click on their hotels (Duran, 2015). For hotels that have a high star and set high rates, the commission fee of third party websites could be costly.
4.2.2 Interaction Between Guests and Managers
How to deal with guests’ reviews on third party websites is a challenge for hotel managers. The reviews provide people an opportunity to estimate the property before they make a reservation. A potential customer can turn to another hotel because of a negative review, or can turn to your hotel by the adorable reply of GM. Therefore, with the rise of third party websites, hotel managers need to estimate guests’ satisfaction, make remedies to guests’ disappointment, interact with their guests even after they leave the property to reduce the appearance and impact of negative online reviews.
Based on the wide range of marketing segments and abundant facilities of Avon City Hotel, Avon City Hotel can benefit from the combination use of CRS (only if Avon City Hotel is in a hotel franchise), GDS, OTA and other third party websites.
5. Reporting and Forecasting Requirements in