Customer Spotlight: Stonebridge Companies

• Two hours saved per managed hotel per week

• Improved communication between general managers, sales and revenue teams

• Data consolidation, facilitating highly accurate forecasting

About Stonebridge Companies

Stonebridge Companies is a privately owned hospitality management and hotel development company. Today, they look after a portfolio of more than 65 hotels across the United States. They work with brands such as Hilton Worldwide, Marriott International and Hyatt as well as independent properties.

When looking into new business intelligence and analytics tools, the team at Stonebridge had a clear goal: to invest in a platform that could pull, aggregate and share reliable data among all stakeholders in real time. 

They wanted a system that would help them create more efficient processes, reveal new opportunities in the markets and free up revenue managers to focus on more strategic tasks.

We recently spoke with Jeff Hinkle, Associate VP, Revenue Management at Stonebridge Companies to see how well Lighthouse Business Intelligence (BI) ticked all these boxes. 

BI drastically improves efficiency

Challenge

In the past, revenue managers spent the majority of their time on non-revenue generating tasks such as pulling reports and aggregating data. While this was necessary, it left less time to analyse trends, look for new opportunities and develop appropriate strategies. 

Solution

Lighthouse Business Intelligence makes all vital property, demand and market data available in just a few clicks. It presents everything in a clear, concise and customisable overview. This leaves them more time to identify important takeaways since they no longer spend hours creating Excel reports.

Results

• Immediate access to both high-level and granular market and performance insights enables deeper analysis in less time.

• Two hours of time saved on data collection and collation per managed hotel per week.

Aggregating data across the entire portfolio becomes simple and easy

Challenge

Stonebridge and the brands it works with each have their own standards and terminology when it comes to core KPIs, market segments and revenue management practices. Reconciling these differences and aggregating fragmented data from different systems was a time-consuming process that led to missed revenue opportunities.

Solution

Lighthouse BI takes over the task of collecting, unifying and displaying data from the entire portfolio. That means pick-up details and other demand trends can be identified at a single hotel, across a specific region or for the whole portfolio.

This creates new opportunities to launch or participate in marketing campaigns, host new sales initiatives and track their effectiveness in real time.

Results

• Ability to quickly source-specific data points needed to make smart distribution decisions.

• Chance to discover and act on the latest trends well before the competition.

• More targeted and data-driven revenue, sales and marketing tactics.

Easily accessible data improves interdepartmental communication

Challenge

Sharing performance data and aligning goals among the commercial departments used to be difficult. That resulted in sales, revenue and marketing teams often working in silos instead of collaborating.

Solution

Lighthouse BI provides actionable insights for all commercial teams.

The revenue managers leverage live performance data and automated forecasting to optimise pricing and distribution decisions.

Sales staff use the platform to track corporate account production, monitor group performance and check room type availability for new requests.

Marketing teams can base new campaigns and promotions on demand trends and predicted need dates.

Even GMs benefit since the daily Snapshot email gives them a quick and comprehensive overview of their property's performance and opportunities.

Results

• Cross-departmental access to data encourages communication between sales, revenue, marketing and senior management.

• Improved collaboration results in more targeted and cohesive commercial strategies.

Automated forecasting saves time and increases accuracy

Challenge

Stonebridge’s revenue managers look after a portfolio of at least ten hotels. That made creating and maintaining an accurate forecast for all their properties a time-consuming task. On top of that, the forecasts were only ever as good as the data and the revenue manager’s intuition they were based on.

Solution

Lighthouse Business Intelligence consolidates information from each hotel’s RMS and PMS to understand current OTB business and booking pace. Then it pulls live forward-looking demand and market data. All these insights go into the platform’s automated forecast. This outlook is updated automatically every time the market shifts.

Results

• Improved forecast accuracy due to more available live data points.

• Time saved by switching from manual to automated forecasting.

• Easier analysis of performance vs. forecast due to quick access to real-time performance data.

The true value of a comprehensive revenue management platform

For Jeff and his team, Lighthouse Business Intelligence has become more than a revenue management tool.

“Lighthouse Business Intelligence allows us to dive into a conversation about the hotel’s performance and immediately access information to support it. This has been instrumental for us since the first hotel to act on new trends and create the corresponding strategy will see the biggest benefit.“