A headache-free guide to hotel revenue management software adoption

Taking a leap into the unknown is rarely a comfortable exercise, and for hoteliers, it can be especially challenging right now. Under pressure to deliver bookings two years into a pandemic, where travel rules and regulations can flip completely in the space of 48 hours, stress levels are at an all-time high. Add in the need to do more with less, and changing hotel software may seem like one step too far.

Fortunately, that’s increasingly not the case. More and more hotel software is plug and play, rapidly integrating with the data structures and systems you already have. Modern-day hotel technology interfaces are designed to be intuitive and quick to pick up. 

But, despite the advances in hotel software platforms, there is still an important human factor. While the pandemic may have moved us apart physically, it has awoken us all to the potential for connecting and communicating through digital tools in a way and depth previously thought impossible in business communications. We have been forced to imagine a different way of working, so that technology support can still be as good as in-person, even when we are separated physically.

It would have been easy to retreat in this period, but knowing that hotels will need to build back better and leaner, we at Lighthouse have doubled down on this principle. At any given moment, our team is online, in multiple languages, with technical expertise at hand.

The result of this from our end is a Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) score of 98.17 and a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 74. We use these customer feedback surveys to identify ways to improve their experience of both our product and our service.

What do these CSAT and NPS scores mean? The latest results show that 98% of our clients are satisfied with our service, and seven out of ten of our customers are more than happy to recommend it to their peers and colleagues.

What is a good NPS score? Well the global average NPS score is 32, which places Lighthouse in the very upper quartile of organizations. What about a good CSAT score? It varies industry to industry, but generally falls between with 75 and 85, with Lighthouse once again outperforming the market benchmark by a wide margin.

Transitioning to new revenue management software

What these scores indicate, above all, is the way we go about our business. We want your hotel to succeed at all times, and that moment of change between systems and approaches is critical. Any downtime in understanding market conditions is a capability gap that no revenue manager wants to be faced with.

But don’t just take it from us. Here’s what an Lighthouse customer has to say about our customer support team, “From my first interaction with Lighthouse’s team, I’ve been impressed with their friendliness and positive can-do attitude. Whatever question we have, there is always someone there to answer it and if there is an issue, they solve it as quickly as possible, says Pascal Gaudio, Revenue and Distribution Manager, Prime Hotels, “Lighthouse’s high level of customer service makes us feel very valued as clients and has resulted in a strong relationship with them”.

We appreciate that you need to stand-up any technology, understand how to use it, and produce results in limited time frames. That’s why we are even more focused on close support of our clients, particularly when they are turning on our hotel revenue management software for the first time. 

“I’ve never seen market managers offer as much support, check in as regularly and follow up as diligently, as I have working with Lighthouse”, explains Peachtree Hotel Group’s Senior Vice President Revenue Generation Vickie Callahan, “Especially during the rough time we all had in 2020, their entire team rose to the occasion, provided valuable reassurance and was phenomenal all around. In short, we have a much closer relationship with them than I ever thought possible with a tech provider.

“Whatever question we have, there is always someone there to answer it and if there is an issue, they solve it as quickly as possible”, notes Gaudio. 

Having this support in place means that the inevitable teething problems of moving to a new platform can be quickly resolved. 

“The few issues I’ve had, have always been solved quickly”, explains Takafumi Kondo, Cluster Director of Revenue Management for Japanese investor and hotel management company Pacifica Capital K.K, “This has been an issue repeatedly with other tech providers, but Lighthouse stands out to me in this regard”. 

Learning from feedback

It doesn’t stop there. Feedback from our users means that we are consistently growing our existing hotel software systems to give hoteliers the capabilities and the flexibility they need from their business intelligence tools. 

By putting these tools to the test with real users in everyday scenarios, we can adjust and improve upon them. Part of why we have been able to move so many hotels into the Lighthouse ecosystem over the last two years, while still maintaining our high CSAT and NPS scores, is through listening to those users. 

Whether looking for more granularity in the data, new dashboards or improvements to the user interfaces, we engage in a continuous process of refinement and innovation - which means that every new user has an easier journey than before.

“TheLighthouse teams are always eager to develop their product and are wonderful to work with. Customer support is outstanding and our feedback for enhancement truly matters”, finds Alexis Remy, Vice President of Revenue Management & Distribution for Hard Rock Hotels International. 

“Lighthouse greatly values its client’s input. They regularly ask for feedback and are always looking for new ways to improve their platform and better cater to our needs”, agrees Peachtree’s Callahan,  “The constant feature updates and additions in Rate Insight, as well as the launch of their most recent tool, Market Insight, proves this. We’re already using this new product in several of our hotels and are benefitting from its forward-looking demand insights. I’m excited to roll it out further because I’m positive it’ll give our team an even better understanding of our markets”.

A boost to productivity

The feedback from the customers is loud and clear - don’t be afraid to take the plunge. 

Intuitive design, built with experience from hoteliers themselves, means the commercial platform  we have built is not an off-the-shelf solution squeezed into a hotel-sized box. It is custom-made for the hotel industry, so you can go from installation to full utilization within days, completely independently if you so wish. 

However, if this isn’t the case, we’re just a click away. Whether you’re experiencing a compatibility issue, a technical glitch or the need to build in new capabilities, an Lighthouse team member is available to chat. For this reason, for the second consecutive year  Lighthouse has been recognised in the HotelTechAwards by Hotel Tech Report as the best-in-class in three individual hotel software categories. 

This year, Hotel Tech Report also ranked Lighthouse the 3rd most customer centric company in the Hotelier Choice award, which is out of more than 100+ of the top hotel tech companies globally, all voted for by hoteliers. 

This recognition, paired with top performing customer satisfaction scores, are a result of our best-in-class support structure. They tell us that we are creating an environment that is easy for our customers to shift to, and then to find success within. And we don’t intend to let that change any time soon.