Have you traveled recently? More than likely, you used the internet to search for the “best” price in whatever way you might define that: a combination of room, car rental, and airline seat class prices; discounts; travel dates; length of stay; and so on. Conversely, as a decision maker in the hospitality industry, you cannot escape the influence of search engines, online travel agents, and social media on how you price your product. In this course, you will explore various revenue management, pricing, and internet marketing strategies and tactics that can enable you to maximize revenue at your firm.
Revenue management is about rejecting current opportunities for potential future opportunities while maximizing profit. Pricing has also become an increasingly important mechanism in a firm's profits. In this course, you will begin by examining how to incorporate uncertainty in setting prices along with the trade-offs between demand and price. Calculating breakeven rates will assist you in determining where to set prices.
Your customers have varying appetites for risk; in hospitality, this entails whether they will book now or wait for a lower price. How your competitors react to price changes you make will impact your revenue as well, and you will explore a model for framing these interactions.
Finally, you can optimize your position on internet search results and increase conversions by applying the search engine optimization strategies that you will explore in this course. These strategies can increase your visibility to target customers.
This course includes a pricing simulation game, where you will first compete against the computer to set prices competitively, then you will play the game with your peers. We recommend that you start the game immediately to ensure that you have enough time to experience (and enjoy!) the game in the final module.
