Mr. Xavier Furtado is the Managing Director of the famous Holiday Inn Resort, Goa. He holds a degree in Hotel and Restaurant Administration from Oklahoma University, and a Diploma in Food and Beverage Service from Cesar Ritz Le Bouveret, Switzerland. He also owns the renowned “The Fisherman’s Wharf” chain of specialty restaurants.

Located in the Cavelossim (South Goa) along the Mobor beach, the Holiday Inn Resort, Goa was opened two decades ago and is probably one of the earliest Holiday Inn Resorts in India.

We caught up with Mr. Xavier Furtado sometime back and did a short interview with him to understand their journey with RevOpt. Presented below are the excerpts of the interview:

[RevOpt] Q. Why did Holiday Inn Resort Goa need to outsource its Revenue Management?

[Xavier Furtado] A. While the tourism sector in Goa was growing every year, we were unable to get our fair share of the market. The growth in tourism led to investments in the hospitality sector and it saw a steady increase in the supply side for rooms. Increased competition from the newer entrants meant that there was price cutting by hotels and rate shopping by guests, travel agents and corporates. The increased share of OTAs in the overall business required a new thought process and revised strategy to capitalize on this trend. We were not growing to our true potential and wanted to do better than the overall market growth.

While we were confident that we have a very strong product, constantly balancing the pricing and ensuring rate parity for all the various channels and at the same time maintaining the yield was proving to be a challenge for us. We wanted to remain competitive and grow exponentially and this is where we realized that we really needed to bring in a professional and experienced Revenue Management partner.

Q. Why was RevOpt selected as the partner?

A. We evaluated a few organizations that were providing revenue management services, what we were looking for was a long-term partner who would deliver consistent and sustainable revenue growth without compromising on the value that we provide to our guests. We also wanted to partner with an organization that could provide strategic inputs and lead the growth.

With RevOpt, we found an organization that had a team of Revenue Management Experts with hands-on experience in delivering value to both domestic and international chains and had a successful track record of providing Revenue Management services to similar sized properties.

Q. How long have RevOpt been associated with you and what areas have they focused on?

A. Our engagement with RevOpt is almost close to 2 years now and we have primarily engaged with them on increasing the yield on Room Revenue. RevOpt has looked at all segments of our business, helped us in classifying and making us understand it better. This has helped us focus on each market segment and yield more. All this has been possible with better actionable insights through Business Intelligence on one hand and training and improving the overall revenue management culture across the organization on the other.

We have now started focusing on F&B Revenue Management as well which is helping us to understand and take control of our business with deeper insights.

Q. What value has REVOPT been able to provide for Holiday Inn Resort, Goa?

A. RevOpt has been able to deliver results and have exceeded our expectations as well. We have been able to not only increase the share of FIT business to 46% (from 34% last year) but also increased the penetration in the high-yield e-commerce space and business from direct sources. By pricing dynamically we have been able to yield higher ARR from the online business making it a very profitable segment. We have also been able reduce the Revenue Loss (Wash) from 7.5% to less than 1%. All of this combined with up-selling techniques to generate incremental revenue has resulted in an overall growth of 24% year-on year.

RevOpt has also helped us increase our Market share vis-à-vis our competition.

RevOpt has inculcated a complete Revenue Management culture into our organisation thus creating a vision to have one common goal which is to Optimize Revenues. RevOpt has trained our team to understand the key concepts of Revenue Management and practice it on a day to day basis to make better business decisions. We are very proud to say with all this the Holiday Inn Resort Team has made a significant difference among the competition by following consistent best business practices.

Q. How do you see your engagement with RevOpt going forward?

A. We are very happy with the engagement with RevOpt which has delivered results and are looking forward to replicate the success in other revenue generating areas as well.

RevOpt has been working with Holiday Inn Resort, Goa since March 2015 and is providing the Total Revenue ManagementService for the property. We also did a Revenue Management Concept Workshop for their teams to help bring in a better understanding and to instill a Revenue Management Culture across the teams.