Lisa forwarded me an email describing how travelers are booking their hotel rooms well in advance, then canceling them at the last week or so if they see a special deal or suspect one from a major chain, and rebooking at the lower price. The article went on to say how the bigger hotel chains are less worried than the smaller independents, who resent the practice.
There
is a need for differential pricing at times - to fill facilities in the lower season / quiet times of day, and to maximize revenue at other times so that the books as a whole balance or make an acceptable level of profit. But my experience of many systems is that they create anomalies, they get out of hand .... and they should only be set up with extreme care. Otherwise, they end up "turning off" the customer, cause the provider to give a lower quality service to his cheaper customers, and leave the full price payers feeling very hard done by.
I've no big solution to offer. I can offer a principle which we apply that says "keep it simple, consistent, fair and easily justified" but my goodness - even in our business - there are times that it's hard to stick to your guns on such an approach.
(written 2007-11-22, updated 2007-11-24)
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
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[677] Sympathetic development - (2006-04-09)
[742] A visit from the solicitor - (2006-06-03)
[769] King Edward VII - days of empire - (2006-06-20)
[813] Monday Morning at Well House Consultants Melksham - (2006-07-24)
[868] Smoking, or no - (2006-09-16)
[897] Too much for the National Trust - (2006-10-18)
[927] Hotel door furniture - (2006-11-15)
[931] Before and After - Well House Manor - (2006-11-18)
[939] Swipe cards for hotel rooms - Security issues - (2006-11-23)
[951] What happened at Geekmas - (2006-11-28)
[1000] One Thousand Posts and still going strong - (2006-12-18)
[1083] Behind the scenes - (2007-02-17)
[1105] A week is a long time in the life of a conference centre - (2007-03-10)
[1159] It can take more that one plus one to get two. - (2007-04-22)
[1179] Sizing sheets and other domestic issues - (2007-05-07)
[1189] Meet, greet and welcome - (2007-05-16)
[1285] In the army, or in civvie street? - (2007-07-31)
[1311] What do people look for on a hotel web site? - (2007-08-20)
[1319] Customer feedback - lifeblood of a business - (2007-08-25)
[1369] One business, four different angles! - (2007-09-28)
[1371] Hotel in Melksham at Christmas - (2007-09-29)
[1490] Software to record day to day events and keep an action list - (2007-12-31)
[1515] Keeping staff up to date on hotel room status - (2008-01-22)
[1520] Terms and Conditions - Hotel, England - plain English - (2008-01-26)
[1571] Await guests in the early hours - (2008-03-12)
[1637] Providing exceptional service - and carrying on doing so. - (2008-05-09)
[1854] Three Seasonal Pictures - (2008-10-25)
[1900] Table Topics - (2008-11-22)
[1904] Ruby, Perl, Linux, MySQL - some training notes - (2008-11-23)
[1948] Blame Culture - (2008-12-17)
[1957] Why are cooks bad tempered? - (2008-12-22)
[1973] Required Request - (2009-01-03)
[1991] Rules for a King - (2009-01-13)
[2125] We have lost a regular business guest - (2009-04-10)
[2247] A day in the life of a hotelier - (2009-06-18)
[2396] Easing off in our 50s? - (2009-09-06)
[2910] Robust - testing the system - (2010-08-09)
[2916] Testing the robustness of our hotel and training systems - holiday and sickness times - (2010-08-11)
[2960] The Well House team - September 2010 - (2010-09-19)
[2961] Initial handling of phone calls and walk in visitors - (2010-09-19)
[3093] How many toilet rolls - hotel inventory and useage - (2010-12-18)
[3743] Sunday - no longer a day of rest - (2012-05-28)
[3844] Rooms ready for guests - each time, every time, thanks to good system design - (2012-08-20)
[3961] Well House Staff Party - (2012-12-22)
[4302] Sunday is never quiet at Well House Manor - (2014-09-21)
[4365] The changing face of Christmas - (2014-12-26)
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