This time out we’ll provide visibility for several more reports from which your property might benefit, if you’re not using them today. Here are three more examples.
Trends: Reservation vs. Guest Source Analysis (R-R-4-K-1 vs. R-R-4-K-2)
It is good to bear in mind that the Source codes on your Guest Tiles provide a different set of metrics from those attached to your Reservations. While they should always be required on both, a Guest only has a single Tile and the Source on it indicates how your property first came to their attention. The Guest/Inquiry Analysis tracks the long-term success of your marketing efforts to capture the interest of new Guests where the Reservation Analysis measures the relative value attributed to your advertising for enticing Guests to keep returning. The latter can be run for past actual performance or projected revenues tied to reservations on the books within a date range of your choosing. As a bonus, both reports now offer an option for a CSV format output suitable for use with Excel.
As a best practice, Guest Tiles should always be created, if they don’t already exist, for every inquiry regardless of whether there is a Reservation being made at that time. Your Guest database is invaluable as the only list in the world of people who have ever contacted you. You already have their attention.
Analysis: Projected Market Segment Report (R-R-7-B)
While there are some interesting perspectives that can be gained from running this report in various permutations, one purpose that it serves very well is to quickly identify which groups and wholesalers have remaining room blocks within a specified future date range. For those properties that do not use Block Release Schedules, this could be the best way to tell at a glance if your general availability is being negatively affected by unreleased blocks, whether by oversight or resulting from cancelled reservations.
[Note: if you have avoided employing Block Release Schedules because you’ve previously found their configuration to be confusing, be sure to take another look at this very useful functionality. The Group Management module and its related screens received a makeover several years ago to provide a much more intuitive user experience while Block Release Schedules were just recently enhanced.)
Administration: Rate and Package Changes Report (R-R-9-D)
Several years ago, a Rates report menu was added to SMS|Host offering three export file options dealing with various aspects of batch rate postings. A fourth report was subsequently included in this location which many properties may find highly beneficial.
I recently wrote about the off-menu New Rates report that shows what has been added to your system. This report, however, will illustrate any changes that have been made to your existing Rate/Package Headers, Price Plans, Tier Calendars and/or Package components within a date range. If Rate Versioning is enabled, the report can list details for each version that was generated. It can also be run at a more granular level for specific codes and/or track changes by specific Users. This is a great way to monitor the security of your configuration, as well as verify that intended changes have been completed as expected.
Next time, we’ll shift gears and start looking at some recommended best practices for getting the most from your SMS|Host system.
