Customer Spotlight: Thon Hotels

About Thon Hotels 

Thon Hotels is a Norwegian hotel chain, currently the third-largest in Norway, with 50+ hotels in Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands. Thon provides unique, contemporary designs across different hospitality types to suit traveler needs.

We sat down with Mr Alexandre Gras, Business Development Manager at Thon Hotels to find out about how and why he uses Lighthouse’s Rate Insight tool. We learn about the challenges of the Belgian market, and how switching to Rate Insight has opened up revenue strategies and saved both time and money.

Making an impact

We discovered Lighthouse at an event, where we weren’t specifically looking for a new tool at that time, but when we saw the presentation for Rate Insight and the difference versus what was available on the market, we had to have it.

A huge impact Rate Insight made was with price, which was a challenge in our previous process. Before Rate Insight, we were paying per rate shop and per number of competitors we wanted to shop, which was extremely expensive and put pressure on our budget. We also needed to wait 24 hours to get a report, which was also quite time-consuming and made our decision process slow. With Rate Insight we can shop as many times as we want and play with our compset; it’s made a huge difference in how we strategise.

Time-saving and game-changing

Rate Insight really saved us time as it increased the speed of getting data. You can customize the dashboard to suit your strategies and display which data points you would like to see. It has opened more opportunities to explore competitor rates and be more flexible with our strategy across different rate types. I think the more active we are the more we can do and have a better chance of leading the market.

Our revenue management team uses Rate Insight on a daily basis and I use it to analyze competition strategy, such as global rates, to see how we’re positioned and if we need to adapt. The application is open to APIs so the tool itself is very useful and then can be further enhanced.

Live shopping is the feature that has been a game-changer for us. We have some days of the week where we, as well as competitors, are looking at changing rates 2 or 3 times a day. We now have the ability to quickly re-do a shop and have a fresh view of the market. Being able to work faster to respond to change is definitely better for us.

Exploring all angles

Our aim with Rate Insight was to have the capability to explore several types of hotel rates and not only focus on one single view such as the lowest rate, B&B rate or flexible rate. We wanted the capability to play around with the data in the dashboard and potentially uncover different revenue streams. Rate Insight helps us do this, as depending on the season or day we can see a breakdown of different competitor rates, and it’s now so easy to focus on different aspects such as breakfast included rate or non-included, and refundable versus non-refundable rate. We now see that some periods may allow us to optimize our breakfast revenue, so we may choose to sell only breakfast included rates because, thanks to the Rate Insight tool, we know when demand is there. This is helpful in allowing us to better react and adapt strategy because our segmentation and clientele might be attracted by different rate types we’re offering.

Benefits overall

We use Rate insight to understand our performance by also using it for a parity check that helps our properties monitor and control rate distribution, and ensures that our strategy is being correctly implemented. I feel the benefit overall is for the end customer because it makes things fairer in the sense that now we are all playing with the same tools, which allows a more free market. When demand is there, everyone can now see that, adapt to it and then give the most optimal rate to the customer.

I would recommend Rate Insight and really exploring what it can do. Don’t stay static as you can adapt and change your competition as many times as you want. You can really understand the data and customize it your way, which has been great for us.