In conversation with Dieter Eberle, Marketing & Sales, at Hotel Morjan

Please introduce yourself briefly and tell us what makes your hotel stand out.
My name is Dieter Eberle and I am responsible for marketing & sales at Hotel Morjan responsible. Our hotel is now run by the 3rd generation of the Morjan family. We offer our guests 40 rooms, over half of which have fantastic views of the Rhine and Ehrenbreitstein Fortress. Our guests are always impressed by the central panoramic location and the sights of Koblenz, which can be reached on foot. What should I say about our role as a host? We do everything we can to make our guests feel comfortable. We love doing our job and our guests notice that too. We are often praised for our friendliness. On the one hand, this makes us happy, but on the other hand, it amazes us. Friendliness should be the basis for dealing with guests.

‍

Did you or how did you do revenue management before you switched to happyhotel?
We didn't really take revenue management seriously before “Happyhotel”. I regularly checked the price floor for our rooms and calculated the ADR and REVPAR. Room prices were not really dynamic. There were seasonal prices and special prices at events.

‍

What were the decision criteria for Happyhotel?
The average occupancy rate of our hotel has always been very decent, there wasn't much room left for upstairs. My idea was to increase the average room rates. And that wasn't possible without proper revenue management. Anyone who has ever fiddled with all the Excel lists and created forecast and event lists on foot knows what I'm talking about. So there was a need for software and, of course, it had to have an interface to our PMS. We chose “happyhotel” because of its compatibility and the good price-performance ratio. And because I had a good feeling from the very first contact with “happyhotel”. That was very important for us, as we are working together on a very sensitive issue, pricing and the chemistry simply has to be right.

‍

How does Happyhotel make everyday life easier for you?
The autopilot is a great thing. After checking him every day at the beginning to understand how he works, I only check the autopilot sporadically and let him do the pricing. That saves an enormous amount of time. I look at the figures every day, but it takes me a maximum of 30 minutes, because the lists that Happyhotel delivers are almost perfect.

‍

Which feature do you like best?
The autopilot in pricing

‍

What does the dynamic pricing process look like for you NOW?
We focus on events, occupancy and I check from time to time
The prices of the relevant colleagues at the moment. Since the data is excluded
competitive prices used by AI for pricing,
I'll leave them alone. I only intervene in pricing if
unforeseeable situations make it necessary. I'm sure that
humane, emotional intelligence of artificial intelligence in certain
is superior to situations.

‍

How has your average working day changed since the integration of happyhotel?
More time for guests and more joy through positive development of our KPIs 🙂

‍

What do you like best about Happyhotel? Which function feels like saving you the most time?
The autopilot and the evaluations

‍

Have you already made any noticeable additional sales and if so, by what percentage were you able to increase your turnover through happyhotel? (estimate)
We were able to increase sales figures once again as we were able to increase our capacity utilization. However, I would not attribute this to the use of Happyhotel, perhaps indirectly. But where it's really fun is the ADR. We were able to increase this by around 20% in one year and that is pretty much the merit of Happyhotel alone

‍

What are your personal tips for future users of happyhotel?
Intensive study of how AI works. Until you feel good.
1. Feeling good is very important when you leave pricing to others.
2. Always be on standby to intervene again if necessary. Keyword: Emotional intelligence vs. AI

‍

What do you want for Happyhotel's future?
Stay innovative and surprise customers with cool tools

‍

Digitalization in the hotel industry — what should a hotelier start with?
With an alarm clock 🙂 you can also still be analog, as long as it rings and wakes you up. Of course, this does not apply to all hoteliers. But many haven't heard the bang yet.

Sometimes I can't believe it: There are still websites without a booking tool, especially at smaller to medium-sized family-run hotels. It won't be good much longer. The death of hotels in economy class is just beginning. In my opinion, anyone who wants to survive as a hotel should address 5 topics that are important for survival.

1. Know guests better What does the guest really want when they have booked with us? What are the motives behind it. Only those who know their guests and their needs can respond optimally to them.

2. Now the basics of digitization are coming. A hotelier should therefore start with an online presence that also works on the mobile phone and includes a booking tool. The homepage should ideally be the strongest sales channel.

3. Hoteliers should develop their own pricing strategy. Looking at the competitor's prices is also no solution.

4. Pay attention to a reasonable mix of sales channels. Here, too, the basis is a homepage with a booking tool that is technically up to date. Hotels should not depend on just one booking platform, such as booking.com or Expedia. There are lots of exciting sales channels, e.g. meta search engines such as Trivago or Google with HotelAds

And the last recommendation I can give:

5. We would all do well to learn from digital natives. That is the
Population group that has grown into the digital age. Of those
We can learn a lot about digitization. The hotel industry has long since gone digital
achieved. We have been working with self-check-in/check-out and digital
guest folder

‍

What is your most important tool?
Our PMS RESAVIO. This is the digital bridge to our guests

‍

Name three things that you would share with other hoteliers.
1. Get the basics done. These were the 5 points I just mentioned.
2. Hoteliers must be much more involved with their target groups. The needs structures of guests are changing ever faster. Only those who really know their needs can put together effective packages.
3. Dealing intensively with digitization. There are many smart helpers who relieve employees, protect the environment and thus also save costs.

‍