Yield ManageMent definition

Yield managementYield management, also known as revenue management, is the process of understanding, anticipating and influencing consumer behavior in order to maximize revenue or profits from a fixed, perishable resource (such as airline seats or hotel room reservations).At the beginning it was used by airlines, hotels and car rentals now also in other industries, such as hairdressers, theaters, cinemas and shipping.

(Source: www.wikipedia.com )

Yield Management: The science of prices demand for the optimization in operating revenue.

Channel: Electronic booking channels, such as booking, HRS, Hotel.de, etc. or electronic travelagencies databases (GDS) like Amadeus, Sabre, Galileo and Worldspan.

Type of Business: LTDLocation: Bern / Switzerland Office: Laupenstrasse 6 1 minute walk from the railway station Employees: 9Since: 2006

Aurel Zurwerra (Bachelor of Law), Yield Manager and Customer Support

Daniel EyerChief Financial Officer

Hannes Zurwerra (Bachelor of Science in Business Administration), Yield Manager and Customer Support

Jonas Eggel (Master in Computer Science), Technical Officer

Leander Eyer (ETH Informatik Ingenieur), Chief Technical Officer

Martial Kuonen(dipl. Hotelier HF), Sales Manager

Martin Werlen(Master of Business Administration), Marketing-Manager

Maxine WildhaberInternational Sales and Customer Support

Oliver ZurwerraCEO

about us

Your Channel-Yield-Management Partner

Here you see the graphic presentation of the sequence of our «Channel-Yield Management» services.In the following pages the various points of the graph will be presented and the strategy of Hotelpartner explained.

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Connections to the Front Office program

The Front Office Program (Protel / Fidelio / Hogatex etc.) sends automatically every 5-15 minutes, during 12 months, the updated occup-ancy of each room category, so that Hotelpartner knows the number of rooms still to be sold in each category and this information regarding the relative demand of each day, can be seen as a first tendency, and thus the demand is already partially predicted.

Advantage over the competition

All the traditional channel management systems such as Rate Tiger, Channelrush, TravelCLICK, Channel Manager, Ezyield, etc. have no direct connection to the front-office program. Thus, it is not possible to sell the exact number of rooms represented in the Channel Market, therefore the booking to the *last room availability is not guaranteed.

*Last room availability

Through the last-room availability there is already an increase in sales as the latest information on accommodation availability is accessible as soon as

there is a cancellation it is straight away deleted in the front office and directly rebooked in the channel market

(1) interface PMs

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The interplay of different factors determine the size of the demand for each day, week and months. Here are the most important factors briefly described.

Sensitive data: Events happening in the same region or village. Tourist, economic and perhaps even political events taking place simultaneously. Seasons:Holiday periods, an international calendar of school holidays, winter and summer destinations, distinctive range of destina-tions.

Exhibitions and Fairs Calendar:Exhibition calendar of the city

Major events:Concerts, political or sporting large events, conferences, other kinds of events, etc.

Experience of the past:Analysis of the past, average prices of different days, weeks and months over past years

Instantaneous utilization in terms of different remote data:• How long is it until the day of arrival? • For which day is it possible, a short term demand analysis: first survey, check the booking window 1-2 weeks prior to arrival (e.g highseason) or previous months in adavance e.g Easter, Christmas etc

Price decision:right Price at the right tiMe

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Length of stay:How long should or must the guest stay, how should the reserva-tion gaps sold better: For example, on weekends or during exhibi-tions periods, no bookings under 3 days minimum possible stay.

Prices of competitors: Price structure of other hotels in the same town or place. Price’s analysis and observation of its development on the online market on different days. How is the occupancy on the entire city or the position on the different channels on different days in the past, present and future.

Now you see the factors mentioned above in relation to their im-portance for the pricing decision and the price in relation to what the city or holiday resort hotel can offer.

Price decision:right Price at the right tiMe

1. Conclusion: In the holiday hotels is the length of stay and the season very important, so Hotelpartner works with strategic tools in the interest of the revenue’s optimization and better occupancy distribution. Through dynamic settings such as length of stay (minimum stay) and with restrictions such as close to arrival or close to departure etc. Hotelpartner manages centrally all the channels in real time.

2. Conclusion: In the city hotels is the monitoring and observation of hotel prices within the same region and city very crucial indeed.Therefore Hotelpartner, using a specially developed technology, supervises systematically and continuously, (7 days per week / 365 days per year) the development of the price structure in the hotels on the various channels and the pressure on certain single days of strong demand.

Holiday Hotels City Hotels

Seasons *** **

Sensitive Data ** **

Fair Dates * ***

Major Events ** ***

Experience of the past ** **

Current occupancy *** ***

Lengh of stay *** *

Prices of competitors ** ***

* less important** important*** very important

1. Important advantagePresent and Future vs. Past

In comparison to traditional yield management programs such as IDEAS,Active Metrics and Optim, Hotelpartner analyzes not only the Past (PMS History) but above all the present information and the future (permanent market ob-servation of Booking, HRS, etc.) and not only the position of their own hotels but the entire market, (price,capacity of the city,destination). This enables the hotel to be very flexible to the current situation of the market and to respond to channels changing market without taking any risk such as cyclical changes, prices changing behaviour of competitors etc.

Furthermore, even irrational pricing strategies of competing hotels located in the same place are always observed and considered in the decision of the daily price.

2. Important advantage Individuality of the hotel and the location.

HotelPartner optimizes individual pricing strategy of your hotel and is very targeted to the specific needs of each hotel. Price parameters and pricing rules are defined together with the hotelier and tailored according to the location and configuration of the hotel. This allows any hotel, whether a city hotel or a holiday hotel to better promote his own potential and not to miss any opportunity in the framework of its possibilities and to choose the best possible channel management.

In the next page we show how HotelPartner Yield Channel Management Technology is connected with the online mar-ket channels and how we publish price changes in real time on each channel.

Price decision: coMPared to coMPetitors

(2) channels uPdate

Once the relevant market price is defined it is updated in all the channels. Also other changes of rules and re-gulations on the length of stay (Minimum Stay) or other restrictions are centrally carried out on all channels.

Important: The availability of each room is updated every 5-15 minutes with the front office program (Fidelio / Protel / Hogatex etc.)

Conclusion: The pricing decisions is due to the different price para-meters and to the market monitoring, the front office system needs to update the permanent occupancy, prices and availability of all rooms every 5-15 minutes with all the channels. For this reason, Hotelpartner de-veloped several interfaces and connections to the front office program and to all channels.

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Advantage over the competition: By providing direct electronic connection from the channels to the hotel’s front office program, Hotelpartner can accurately check the room occupancy and through the channels sell to the last available room (last room availability). Moreover, the cen-tral management of all channels, can strictly implement the rate-parity.Hotelpartner has always the same price on every channel. For all channels, it’s part of the condition, that each channel is being charged with the same price (Best Available Rate). Many channels investigate now automatically the prices of other channels according to the contract conditions. Due to the strict rate parity conflicts can be avoided.

costs

5% commission on net sales

Total turnover of the hotel management partner channels minus commissions channels = NET channel sales

Hotel Partner charges 5% Commission on the NET channel sales

Important Info: In the interest of the hotel and the hotel rate parity, Ho-telpartner also manages the booking mask of the hotel’s website. On the direct bookings via the hotel website Hotelpartner charges no commission from the principle that direct bookings cannot be charged.

Advantage over competitors: In comparison with other yield management systems (Ideas, Active Metrics, Optims etc.) or channel management pro-grams such as Rate Tiger, Channelrush, EZyield etc. Hotelpartner operates completely success-oriented.Unlike other providers that rent the usage of a software based on a monthly rent, Hotelpartner’s business is not based on the income of the monthly rent but on the inten-sive employment and responsibility of the channel sales increase, 7 days a week / 365 days a year.

Hotelpartner’s commission is not a booking commission and should not be added to the commission of Booking.com, HRS etc. but seen as a cost model for an important service. What we assure is that we give the hotel, at any given time, a maximum effort, with the aim to increase the hotel’s sales, through electronic channels and optimize the market de-mand.

The question is therefore: How high are the increased sales through Hotelpartner’s know-how being generated and how many bookings have not been generated and thereby given to other hotels in the same place/city?

exaMPles in figures

Example 1: 3-star city hotel (42 rooms) Channel turnover managed by Hotelpartner2007: 414’862 2008: 688’112 Increase in percentage: 65% Online turnover as a percentage to the total hotel turnover 2008: 39% Increase in percentage of the hotel total turnover 2007/2008: 21%

Channel Turnover1. Quarter 2008: 167’050 1. Quarter 2009: 177’994 Increase in percent: 6.55%

Example 2: 4-star city hotel (100 rooms) Turnover on Booking.com, HRS, Hotel.de and Expedia2007 managed by the hotel: 165’902 2008 managed by Hotelpartner: 512’713 Increase in percent: 209% 1. Quarter 2008: 117’685 1. Quarter 2009: 126’551 Increase in percent: 7.5%

Example 3: 3-star hotel (25 rooms) Online channels turnover managed by Hotelpartner 2007: 64’201 2008: 111’738 Increase in percentage: 74% 1. Quarter 2008: 48’234 1. Quarter 2009: 53’495 Increase in percentage: 10%

Conclusion 1: The figures correspond to actual transactions, Hotelpartner in all three examples substantially increased the channels turnover.

In Example 1 and 3 Hotelpartner business results significant-ly improve. In case 2 the comparison between the channels sales managed by the hotel (2007) and the sales managed by Hotelpartner (2008) is really astonishing.In all three cases, the figures of the 1st Quarter of 2009 compared to the year 2008 have increased, although the number of overnight stays in the hotels have declined.

Conclusion 2: So far, Hotelpartner with all his customers, improved their turnover regardless of the location of the hotel. The incre-ase in turnover happens because of higher average prices on days of high demand and higher booking of rooms by a lower price on days of low demand through an intensive and daily monitoring of all the channels.

The bookings are via fax or email directly from the channel to the hotel and by the reception into the front office program. This has a direct updating of the room availability on the chan-nels and as soon as the defined factors are met, such as the occupancy of the hotel, time of arrival, the market price, length of stay, etc., a price change, or a modification of the restrictions such as minimum length of stay, and other activities will occur.

Advantage over the competition: Certain front-office systems can be completely integrated, so that in the future bookings will be automatically registered into the front-office equipment.Due to this you can save on administrative resources, like boo-kings registered by hand, employees could be devoted to more meaningful guest orientated activities.Hotelpartner can also analyze a single channel, if you wish, so that the the booking’s overview is visible on a centralized sys-tem for the control of guest’s informations and booking details.

Due to the central archiving of all bookings, statistical reports can be generated for analysis of average prices, utilization, length of stay, demand on certain days etc.Hotelpartner through this analysis can judge better the demand’s development in the future to come.

(3) bookings

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Point 1: Connection to front office program• Last Room availability: Sales to the last free room • Booking of effective capacity in real time • Work with as many types of rooms with no additional administrative work, representative sale of each room category and hotels

Price decision Price decision is the interplay of many factors: capacity of the hotel, size of the city, length of stay, competitors’ rates, events, congresses and season etc.

Point 2: Updated Channels • Price decisions and restrictions such as minimum stay, close to arrival, etc will be centralized and sent through an electronic connection to the different channels.• The effective capacity of the different room categories will be transmitted in 5-15 minutes on all the different channels

Point 3: Bookings to the front office program• Reservations provided by the different channels are sent to the hotel and into their front office • Statistical evaluations about the bookings, sales and figures can be generated

suMMarY

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Endkonsument

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Each customer is a reference. Our customers are glad to share firsthand their satisfaction.

• Hotel Bern (Bern)

• Hotel Sternen Muri (Bern)

• Hotel Continental (Bern)

• Hotel Linde Stettlen (Bern)

• Hotel Glärnischhof (Zurich)

• Califonia House (Zurich)

• Hotel Falken (Lucerne)

• Hotel Schloss Binningen (Basel)

• Hotel Kolbeck (Vienna)

• Hotel Rothensteiner (Vienna)

• Hotel Urania (Vienna)

• Hotel Vienna (Vienna)

• Quartier 24 (Vienna)

• Ferienart Resort & Spa (Saas-Fee)

• Hotel du Glacier (Saas-Fee)

• Hotel Bergheimat (Saas-Fee)

• Hotel Römerhof (Leukerbad)

We thank you for your attention and for your interest. We would be happy to visit you in your hotel for a personal interview.Contact Oliver Zurwerra: oz@hotelpartner.ch

Last but not least our team would still like to have the opportunityto improve your turnover and we leave you with our motto

Be part of our Success

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