Customer spotlight: Swissôtel, The Bosphorus, Istanbul

About the Swissôtel, The Bosphorus, Istanbul

Swissôtel The Bosphorus, Istanbul, the brand’s flagship property, is set on the city’s European side just minutes from Istanbul’s vibrant downtown area. 566 rooms, including 63 Swissôtel Living suites for extended stays, offer guests an exclusive lifestyle experience. An award-winning spa, as well as generous meeting and events facilities, complete the property.

We recently had a chat with Reha Efe, Director of Revenue Management at the Swissôtel The Bosphorus, Istanbul in Turkey about how and why he uses Rate Insight. He shared the challenges of the Istanbul hotel market and told us how he uses Rate Insight to stay competitive and work more efficiently.

Maintaining an overview of a competitive market

When Swissôtel joined Accor, I happily left my old BI tool behind to try a new product recommended and supplied by Accor. While it wasn’t bad, I knew there was room for improvement. Then Rate Insight was suggested to me by a colleague and after a short demo, I knew this was the only tool I wanted to keep working with, especially in our competitive market.

Overall, our property competes with around 150 5-star hotels. This makes the market both highly dynamic and rate-sensitive. Here, even a difference of €5-10 can have an impact on customers’ decisions, particularly in the low season when everyone is fighting for every single guest. This makes positioning crucial for us.

Using Rate Insight to monitor our competitors and market trends has made this much easier, thanks to the live market snapshots I can get with a single click. These insights show me when I need to update my rates to drive more revenue and whether I am positioned in a way that meets our management’s expectations and is in line with the market.

Accurate data and confident decision-making

Data accuracy was a major issue with our previous BI tool and the reports often showed different rates from what appeared online. This made it very hard to trust our tool and base decisions on the prices it showed without conducting time-consuming manual spot checks of OTAs and competitor websites first. Solving this problem was one of my main goals when I implemented Rate Insight.

Now, the market data I see on the dashboard is always up-to-date and accurate, which is essential because it’s the most important information I use to make decisions every day. Since I still like to keep an eye on the live channels, I do spot checks sometimes but have never found any discrepancies.

To me, this is a true game-changer because I can trust that Rate Insight gives me the most current market information I need for well-informed pricing and distribution decisions. I can also confidently pass the information on to other departments so they can plan their operations accordingly.

Increased efficiency and improved workflow

Rate Insight saves me time in several ways. Since I no longer have to waste time on manual spot checks or follow up with a customer support team to fix incorrect data, I save about 30 minutes to one hour a day which I can spend on tasks like training and strategy development.

The tool is also very user-friendly and straightforward. On the easy-to-navigate dashboard, I can immediately see how I am positioned compared to my primary compset. Colour-coded highlights clearly visualize if my rates are in line with the market and make it easy for me to identify trends early on.

Then I can take immediate action on those insights and seize every opportunity to drive revenue for the hotel. To always stay up to date, I keep Rate Insight open in my browser the whole day and refresh it regularly.

The extra information Rate Insight provides about upcoming conferences, trade fairs and other events is another bonus. It helps me fine-tune my strategy for these high-demand times so we can make the most of them.

Effective approach against rate disparity

Rate disparity due to B2B rates being sold on OTAs and metasearch sites is an issue we face regularly. The rate parity tab helps us identify which channels are violating our rules by distributing or using these B2B rates. This enables us to quickly reach out and ask our partners to correct the error or to take other steps with channels which do not respond to this request.

Excellent customer service

Lighthouse’s customer service team has always been very responsive and eager to assist with every question we’ve had. Especially in a dynamic market like Istanbul, this is important since we need quick answers to our queries. So far, we have always been able to reach a member of Lighthouse’s team and have been very happy with the support we’ve received.

A word to your peers

Immediately after using Rate Insight, I knew it was the ideal tool to help me understand market trends and rate positioning. In my eyes, it’s the best rate shopping and business intelligence tool available today since it provides the most accurate live data in a very straightforward way.

If you are a revenue manager who has to make quick, correct decisions, you shouldn’t spend time on manual rate checks. Instead, invest in a tool like Rate Insight to help you save time and drive revenue at your property.

Technology is a very important part of our business which helps us make our daily life easier, especially in such a dynamic industry. In my opinion, every hotelier should at least test Lighthouse’s solutions. Once they do, they will stick with them.