Project Description

How to create an effective revenue management strategy

The Westin Denarau Island Resort & Spa

“ForwardKeys has been able to provide me with air travel insights that are the freshest and most detailed I have seen in my years of working in the hospitality industry. I now know when my key performing source markets are booking for future travel and can plan campaigns around them even before they book accommodation.”

Joe Ellingham
Director of Revenue Management

How the Westin Denarau Island Resort & Spa stays ahead of the competition

The Westin Denarau Island Resort & Spa is part of the Marriott hotel group. It faces fierce competition as there are numerous resorts located nearby that also offer great services. This means the hotel has to be creative and is constantly striving to innovate its hotel revenue management and marketing strategies.

The integrated resort complex is located in Fiji and boasts a beachfront location. It offers a multitude of luxury facilities such as swimming pools, a golf course and a spa and prides itself on exceeding guest expectations and providing an unforgettable experience.

The Westin’s core tasks

The Westin Denarau Island Resort & Spa has many important tasks, including hotel revenue management, which involves selling the right rooms for the right price at the right time – using data analytics to predict optimal sales.

Another core task is marketing, the aim of which is to target the right audience at the right time to stay ahead of their competition.

In the past, the resort used in-house historical data to establish its hotel revenue management and marketing strategies.

Keeping up with the fast-moving tourism market

The tourism market shifts incredibly fast, and each year brings new tourists from different countries to a destination. Since the Westin only had access to historical data and could not view traveller movements from a broader perspective, it was unable to predict its future target audiences and when they would book.

This had a negative impact on the accuracy of room rates, which, in turn, negatively affected revenue. It also meant that the marketing budget was used suboptimally, misspent on marketing in the wrong places, at the wrong time and to the wrong audiences.

How ForwardKeys helped

The Westin sought external data that could help them to solve these issues – and its search led it to ForwardKeys.

Our collaboration began with a correlation analysis in which we assessed whether our data correlated with that of the Westin. The study revealed a near-perfect correlation, meaning that our data could be used to forecast arrivals from the Westin’s source markets.

Having established this, ForwardKeys offered two reports to address the Westin’s issues.

First was the Destination Report, which showed evolving market conditions like the nationality and profile of travellers to Fiji, and at which airport they were arriving.

The second report was the Forward 90-180-270 Report*, which anticipated future air traffic flows from a specific source market to the destination. ForwardKeys was able to forecast nine months ahead using a complex algorithm that considers current bookings, historical bookings, route seasonality and events such as local public holidays.

*This report was created after the Westin’s future source markets had been established using the Destination Report.

A successful revenue management strategy

Since collaborating with ForwardKeys, the Westin has been able to outperform its competition thanks to the data and reports it receives regularly, which provide it with accurate and reliable insights on arriving travellers.

Equipped with this information, the hotel is well prepared to serve the needs of its audiences while improving its marketing strategy and hotel revenue management processes.

Our ForwardKeys platform can further increase the success of hotels and resorts like the Westin by providing them with a better understanding of their source markets and showing the booking pace of visitors.

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