Revenue Management by Ms. Manasi Bidikar

The International Hotel Management students of INLEAD were recently treated to a fun and interactive industry expert session on Revenue Management so as to reinstate the emphasis that teachers have always been laying on Revenue Management. Recent trends have shown that students are always very keen on Hospitality operations, while ignoring the revenue aspect. The session was a reminder for them on this department’s importance.

Ms. Manasi Bidikar - Revenue Manager – Taj Hotels Resorts & Palaces, Gurgaon was the guest speaker for the session. Ms. Manasi has been with the Taj group for almost a decade and her experiences are very rich and diverse. She took the students through her professional journey and laid a lot of emphasis on Revenue Management which is a very vital vertical for hospitality industry.

Ms. Manasi talked in great lengths on Revenue Management. She said that the strategy of Revenue Management is to focus on price rather than costs when balancing supply and demand. It suggests exploiting each products value cycle & continually re-evaluating revenue opportunities.

For Effective Revenue Management an organization must have:

1) Segmentation (Know your Customer based on Pricing) a different rate must be charged to Leisure guest and a Corporate Guest.

2) Price Fencing, it must be done properly in order to sustain for long term in market as the price must be according to market it may not be more or less.

Online Travel Agents (OTA) are considered as Frenemy for hotel business as they provide the business in the time of low occupancy as well as they cut the profit margins of hotel at the time of peak season. Here the part of Revenue Management plays effective role of taking decision how to deal with situation and raise more revenue.

She concluded the session by stressing on how during the time of Recession, Revenue Management plays a vital role in effective utilization of available resources by the means of Cost Optimization.

“The session proved to be extremely useful and we realized the importance of Revenue Management, having heard it from an industry expert,” said Dixit Mohit, July 2015, INHM.

 “It was a good introductory session on revenue Management, and the speaker’s experiences were quite awe inspiring,” said Naman Pare, July 2015, INHM.