Hotel Insider

St George Lycabettus

by Victor Matsas • 10 Nov 2024

Location: Greece, Athens

Before presenting the results of our research on the 5-star market in Athens, we decided to do a case study for one of its most famous boutique hotels.

The main reason we chose St. George Lycabettus Lifestyle Hotel is that it recently launched a state-of-the-art RMS system and intrigued us to make a comparison with our own predictions.

It should be noted here that Hotel Insider's price recommendations are based only on data from the Athens 5-star market and do not take into account either the hotel's occupancy or the prices it sells its rooms.

In the chart below, the green "aisle" is the "guide" of suggested prices given by Hotel Insider's algorithm for the coming period and the bright red zigzag line gives us the minimum sales prices that our shopper "pulled" from Booking. Towards the end of October the red line changes color several times due to the change of room type with the minimum rate, however we see the minimum prices closely following the green corridor of Hotel Insider.

A look at all the sale prices of all hotel room types gives us a more complete picture (see second chart). Indeed, it seems that RMS is going up and down day by day, following the weighted average of the market.

However, this picture was surprising, when we realized that the (almost) absolute match of Hotel Insider's proposals does not concern the prices that the hotel's RMS sends to Booking, but has to do with the partner offer that it itself "throws" into the market to break parity!

I would venture to say that there are clear indications of yield management on the part of Boooking, as if it knows the ideal price that each hotel should sell better than itself.

The well-known history of the Partner Offer is something that should be addressed immediately and effectively by hoteliers, because - unfortunately - control has been lost.