WALK SOURCE
You easily find a hotel that will accept one of your walks, or you list that you have rooms available at a specific rate to help out and take a walk for another nearby property.
The hotels I know using this are very happy with how awesome and easy it works. No more call arounds. =)
No set up, no cost other than transactional.
PRICEMATCH (I have mentioned this before, but I am continually impressed)
I am not sure how you distribute, and what tools you use, and how deeply through the GDS you get into OTA’s. I am not sure how closely you watch the comp set and manage rates.
BUT:
Pricematch is an algorithm that is sort of soup to nuts, automating the rate shopping to channel management experience, IE you may not need a revenue manager, and let’s admit it – you probably couldn’t afford one anyway, and this exhausting task lands on the GM, AGM, or someone else just trying to get through the day. Revenue Management, and distribution on a whole, has gutted and exhausted us, tying our hands, and wasting time fighting for your own inventory and rate. So here’s what it does:
It auto shops your comp set. Then it looks at your PMS YoY data. Then it looks at holidays, events, weather, and local airfares.
Then it returns the rate *you* should be at vs your comp set in your market.
You press a button, and then the rate is implemented through the channel manager. It’s revolutionary. It’s resolved a number of labor and technology issues about the complexity and sheer annoyance of distribution. No set up cost (possibly?), just flat monthly fee.