CHICAGO—In an effort to bring its entire portfolio under one platform, hotel management and development firm First Hospitality created its own revenue management system (RMS), FirstAnalytics.
According to Jenna Fishel, the company’s VP of revenue management, First’s Hospitality’s managed hotels had been using their respective RMS software. “FirstAnalytics is an upgrade to and extension of the brand platforms,” she said. “We pull in all brand RMS data, PMS data, sales system data and other third-party data into one universal platform to look at all hotel data in a similar fashion providing a more equitable performance view.”
The new platform enables the company to be more efficient in making decisions for each hotel in the portfolio.
“Anyone using brand systems alone knows the manual work for the revenue team to pull all data sources into one visually digestible format,” said Fishel. “FirstAnalytics allows us to maximize all available data, so we are dedicated to providing the best situational analysis. We have expanded the impact of the revenue managers to influence data-driven decisions powerfully. Unlike many data aggregation platforms available now, FirstAnalytics was designed by and for revenue managers.”
Data is extracted from a number of sources: the RMS, PMS, sales systems and third-party data from such companies as STR and Travelclick. “This platform quickly flags and diagnoses challenges through a health dashboard for an entire portfolio, market or individual property—regardless of the brand. We can review historical and future trends,” noted Fishel.
The new RMS was launched at the perfect time, when hotels need help in finding ways to generate revenue during the pandemic.
“In 2020, we have utilized some of the platform’s key functions to understand and strategize on recovery curve trends by segment, validate forecasts, prove sales booking goals and recognize and understand opportunity segments,” noted Fishel. “We can anticipate demand changes faster than any single tool will allow remaining ahead of the market to maximize revenue opportunities.”
She added that last month’s RevPAR results show a 15.1% increase in RPI, and said, “We attribute these results to revenue’s use of FirstAnalytics, our strong marketing efforts and our highly motivated sales team.”
First Hospitality currently has 44 properties in the portfolio. Two recent additions were the Residence Inn by Marriott Columbus Airport in Ohio and the Home2 by Hilton Des Moines at Drake University in Iowa.
The rollout of FirstAnalytics will be complete in the first quarter of 2021, according to Fishel. “It has been inspiring to see the development of FirstAnalytics with our team, led by Mike Kuzmar, our corporate director of revenue,” she said. “We have one final phase of properties that we are still adding on. As we roll out new dashboards and tools in FirstAnalytics, our internal team continues to implement significant new enhancements to the tool.”
