Marketing and Revenue Management from a Lodging Perspective

Steve Lefkovits — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:30:39 +0000

Multifamily operators benefit from the experiences of revenue management users in other industries. Lodging, in particular, is a similar enough business that both the parallels and the differences are readily obvious, and don’t take away from gaining deeper insights into a statistical approach to pricing and demand management.

Below are selected videos taken from a presentation given by Kathleen Reidenbach of Kimpton Hotels. In the short videos, she shares revenue management practices and strategies used by the lodging industry and draws parallels to the multifamily industry.

Revenue and Market Share Lift from Using Revenue Management

Kathleen Reidenbach, Vice President of Revenue Management and Distribution for Kimpton Hotels was kind enough to speak at length to the 2008 AIM Conference. Her presentation detailed Kimpton’s increased revenue and market share from revenue management, how they optimize pricing using demand information, and the deep integration of marketing with revenue management and the staffing required to reach the right customers with the right offers at the right time.

For those interested in managing advertising in social media, the last video will be especially useful as she details how they use public feedback from ratings sites as a management tool, and how Kimpton manages their brand reputation in an environment with customer-generated content.

Reidenbach’s complete presentation is available on this site to view. Above and below are four video excerpts of some of the most directly applicable lessons she shared with the multifamily industry.

Revenue Management Staffing and Infrastructure

Automatic Distribution of Pricing
Across Marketing Channels

Reputation Management – Customer Ratings and Comments

Does RM Work? AMLI Case Study – 5 Short Videos

Steve Lefkovits — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 04:07:08 +0000

In a previous post, we gave a short summary of some highlights from Steve Small’s presentation on yield optimization to the April 2008 Apartment Internet Marketing Conference. Steve is an Executive Vice President at AMLI Residential. Steve and AMLI were among the early pioneers (and beneficiaries) of revenue management in the apartment industry. Below are five videos that greatly expand on the topic and provide some depth into their approach to revenue optimization.

The AMLI case study is important because the company takes a “people and process first” approach to performance. They treat revenue management as simply one form of optimization, a technology among a number of quantifiable efforts they use to drive incremental results. AMLI has about 22,000 apartment homes in 11 different markets. They are headquartered in Chicago. Hear from Steve Small directly below.

Part 1 – 2:20 “AMLI’s Use of Revenue Management”

Part 2 – 2:40 “Elasticity in Revenue Management”

Part 3 – 5:36 “Monitoring and Reporting Tools”

Part 4 – 2:18 “Pricing Console – User Interface”

Part 5 – 3:30 “Lead-to-Lease Success”