RLH Corp. Turns to Ideas to Redefine Revenue Strategy

MINNEAPOLIS—RLH Corporation has prescribed a transformational goal for itself: build a culture around commercial revenue strategy and adopt technology that breaks down organizational silos across sales and marketing. The company is working with Ideas Revenue Solutions to take a disruptive approach to proactively optimize revenue and create a competitive advantage, according to the company.

The IDeaS G3 Revenue Management System (RMS) is designed to automate pricing and inventory control across room types, properties and portfolios. By tapping into SAS analytics, artificial intelligence and deep machine-learning, IDeaS G3 RMS frees up revenue managers from arduous tactical duties, enabling them to be more strategic about growing revenue, according to the company. This results in smarter pricing decisions and greater revenue over time.

RLH Corporation plans to align its revenue management, pricing and yielding insights with marketing and sales to create a more powerful overarching commercial strategy using Ideas. According to the company, knowing they always have an optimal pricing program in place, revenue strategists can focus on aligning business strategies across departments, such as sales and marketing. With the increasing complexity of booking channels and more competition from hotel brands, this has the potential to leapfrog RLH Corporation past its competitors, even in tough markets, the company noted.

Calvin Anderson, chief of revenue optimization, RLH Corporation said, “We need to blow up this idea that using legacy technology systems and following the status quo is ‘good enough.’ We wanted a business solution that looks beyond what others are doing currently in the revenue management space. Ideas has done their homework in areas no one else has touched. As a result, both the Ideas’ product and roadmap are ahead of everyone else. Ideas automates pricing down to the individual rate code and room type, instead of centering all pricing around a single retail or BAR price point. This level of detail is crucial because true commercial optimization must consider a multiplicity of demand variables and respond to each accordingly. This level of adaptability and granularity gives us a more acute, real-time understanding of changing demand.

“While most revenue management platforms want to reach this level, the nearest functionality outside of Ideas offers a manual implementation that is rules-based,” he continued. “Ideas’ onboarding and training program has made this transition an extremely smooth and reassuring process. Throughout the implementation, the Ideas team has been highly supportive, and we’ve already seen significant value in IDeaS G3 RMS.”

Dr. Ravi Mehrotra, co-founder and president, IDeaS, said: “At Ideas, we’re helping RLH Corporation transform its complete approach to revenue management, but what’s more important is that our visions for the future of this industry are so strongly aligned. We have the right approach and capabilities to help RLH Corporation create an even more strategic, aligned culture, and we look forward to making this journey together a successful one.”