Hotel Insider

Niche Hotel Athens

by Victor Matsas • 25 Dec 2024

Location: Greece, Athens

The reason we chose Niche Hotel Athens for our Case Study on the 4-star Athens is that it is the first medium-sized hotel we met in the starting list (position 4) and we saw it soon in the top ten based on the Competitive Index, selling in all cases at least 15 € above the Weighted Average of the market.

This hotel is the leader of an informal "Brat Pack" trio that includes The Athens Gate Hotel along with Electra Hotels & Resorts, striking the coveted balance between high CI scores and sales prices above MM.

The first positive sign from a first look at Niche is the absence of the notorious Partner Offer in booking, which means that the hotel has managed to keep full control of the distribution prices. The good day from the morning it seems.

We then used Hotel Insider's Strategy Tool to try to "discover" the pricing strategy followed by the hotel's Revenue Manager, matching sales prices (from today until the end of February) with strategies based on the competitiveness index.

The strategy that almost "fitted" the pricing behavior of the hotel gave us a range of fluctuation between 85 and 95 of the Competitiveness Index (see blue area in the chart), satisfying almost all the time the 2 cheapest room types (High Floor with yellow color and Niche Room with light blue), while for some weekends until the end of the year prices skyrocket outside the blue area as the cheapest room type available is the Compact Niche Room.

In practice, this means that for almost all dates between now and the end of February the hotel maintains its high positions in the CI index (between 85% and 95%) by selling at very good prices, without deviating from the limits of the blue corridor set by this strategy except in a few cases.

One last thing that surprised us is that for the period 16-20 February the hotel sells 66 € above MM, with the revenue manager having identified an event that still does not seem to have "caught" the rest of the market players. This is supported by the (relatively) limited availability of the market that appears for this period from now! (see circled area in diagram).