In conversation with Dirk Herber, Sales Manager at Hotel Point 7

Please introduce yourself briefly and tell us what makes your hotel or host role stand out.
My name is Dirk Herber and I am the Sales Manager at Hotel Point 7, but I also help out in various other areas... wherever work is needed. Our hotel, Point Seven in Fulda, is a relatively small hotel with 28 rooms and 4 seminar rooms. The highlight of our hotel are definitely our two large roof terraces, from which you have a wonderful view over the whole of Fulda.

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Did you or how did you do revenue management before you switched to happyhotel?
Yes, we were already doing revenue management before the introduction of happyhotel. However, happyhotel gave me completely new opportunities to check and adjust our prices. In our business segment in particular, we were able to significantly increase our turnover. It is more common for us to sell our rooms for 200€ on weekends. We would have thought that was impossible in the past and with Happyhotel we dared to take this step. With a room sale of this type, we have the monthly costs for Happyhotel back in. That is really great.

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What were the decision criteria for Happyhotel?
The decisive point was a recommendation from Andreas Rhein, who advises our management. However, we employees were also quickly inspired by happyhotel thanks to the huge added value.

I now enjoy Happyhotel so much that I often catch myself accepting your price suggestions after work. Your tool is a bit addictive!

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How does Happyhotel make everyday life easier for you?
I usually only check prices once a day. However, this also means that, as already mentioned, I am also involved in other activities. With happyhotel, I have a good overview of our prices and price developments. The algorithm's suggested prices also speak for themselves. It's good to see that you get 15€ more per room with your rooms than originally planned. That motivates me and makes me happy.

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Which feature do you like best?
I find the pick-up calendar very cool. It saves me a lot of time and I can immediately see at a glance when new bookings have been received. I also use the analysis area occasionally. In the past, we had no way of being able to view our key figures so clearly and on a daily basis. However, as we have only been working with Happyhotel for 4 months and our hotel is still very new, we don't have as many comparative values available here yet.

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What does the dynamic pricing process look like for you NOW?
First, we tried out a more conversational pricing strategy to get familiar with Happyhotel and see how our customers react to it. In this way, we have moved towards higher prices step by step. In general, we receive a lot of bookings at very short notice, which makes planning difficult in a certain way. However, happyhotel allows prices to be adjusted very quickly to changing demand. We are currently still accepting prices manually. In the future, however, it is planned to leave this task to autopilot.

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Have you already made any noticeable additional sales and if so, by what percentage have you been able to increase your turnover through happyhotel? (estimate)
Unfortunately, I can't give any details about this. Our hotel opened in the middle of the corona period. Accordingly, the figures were “falsified” from the start. In any case, I can say that sales have improved significantly since the introduction of happyhotel. I would even talk about an increase in turnover of between 30% and 40%.

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What do you want for Happyhotel's future?
Nothing in particular, really. Maybe it would be cool to receive notifications within Happyhotel in the future. In particular, when the program identifies optimization opportunities somewhere and makes specific recommendations for action.

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