Dubai calling - travel local, think global

Robert Holland, managing director, UK & Ireland, HotelPartner Revenue Management, looks at what the Middle East market can learn from others’ mistakes

?

Dubai has been a test case for the transition away from focusing on oil revenue to diversifying into tourism and it and the wider Middle East have benefited from the rise in international travel in recent decades.

?

We are now seeing locations such as Qatar and Oman rise in prominence, with diverse offerings,? turning their attention to a worldwide market. What unites these nascent global markets is that a lot of their success comes through the online channels, which puts them at risk of leaving some profit unclaimed.

?

For us, revenue management is, of course, important, but alongside that is the need for tailored distribution management. It's about getting the reservations through the right channels and minimising the amount of commissions that are paid to third parties to deliver that business, especially when demand is very strong.

?

What we're able to do at HotelPartner is ratchet back what we're delivering to certain channels at certain times to make sure that when demand is strong enough, we're able to maximise it for the direct channel, and reduce the amount of commissions that people are paying to third parties.

?

The vast majority of channel managers that exist out there are binary. They are open or closed and there is no nuance: they cannot automatically open certain channels at certain times and close off other channels at other times. Our proprietary software enables us to not only open and close different channels at different times, but we're also able to open and close different room types and rate types based on consumer demand. That allows us to manage distribution in such a way that we can always deliver certain availability to third party websites whilst delivering different availability to our own website, thus retaining certain room categories for the direct market, which can deliver greater profitability for our partners.

?

We expect to see demand building in the Middle East for outsourcing of specialisations such as revenue & marketing. As we have experienced in more developed markets, such as Europe, there simply aren’t enough skilled staff to go around and, particularly with the tourism push Saudi Arabia is undergoing in anticipation of 2030, there is a brain drain out of Dubai in particular to operators in Neom & Al Diriyah.

?

Despite the relative youth of the international market in the region, there are similarities in the demand patterns to other regions, where our experience in these more established markets can come to bear. For sun seekers, where they travel in the Middle East could be a matter of a coin flip, as with the ski market. Our clients in St Moritz are at times using a competitive set that includes Aspen & Courcheval as they have no equal in their own market. The regional spread is much broader than you might expect.

?

The reality is that your hotel in Doha is actually going to be competing with hotels in Dubai for the leisure market and that's where it requires a knowledge of multiple markets, rather than just a knowledge of your own.? And to enable you to compete within that field, you must ensure that your pricing isn't just competitive in the local Doha market, but in the wider Middle Eastern market. Data analytics can be used to determine who your real competitors are, which hotels are being searched alongside your hotel, which hotel is receiving the booking and whether you are receiving your fair market share. ?This analysis can be done just as effectively by our team of revenue managers based from our offices in Hamburg or Vienna as it can in your offices in Doha or Dubai.