Haven targets greater yield with new software

Haven Holidays is about to implement new revenue management software to optimise its yield on holiday sales.

As part of the Bourne Leisure Group, which also owns Butlins, the operator runs 36 holiday and caravan parks around the UK and has managed the pricing and availability of its holidays manually, using the business knowledge of its two revenue managers.

Neil Davies, head of commercial at Haven Holidays told IT PRO revenue management is key to the profitability of the business, given the ad hoc events that can affect supply and demand, like the floods and foot-and-mouth outbreaks earlier this year.

"Although our revenue managers do an excellent job, they can only ever focus in detail on short-term periods into the future," he said.

"They tend to concentrate on the 35-week holiday season, but that leaves a huge opportunity to maximise yield across the rest of the year and manage pricing and availability to ensure the opportunities represented by retail outlets we run in each park are also maximised."

Gaining this extra visibility of trends and forecasting demand requires that Haven revenue managers move away from their largely manual procedures and have more granular, timely information on pricing and bookings.

Haven has signed an agreement to implement JDA Tour Revenue Optimiser software to automate the discovery process for revenue managers, taking data feeds about pricing and availability from its specialist holiday reservation platform.

The company is just about to begin implementation of the revenue management software and will handle the complex integration between it and its reservations system in conjunction with both systems' providers.

Davies said the system will be largely responsible for providing the basis for future increases in turnover that will largely be generated by increasing margins rather than volume, by "making decisions that could add five or ten pounds to each of the 600,000 holidays we sell a year".

He said the system, which is expected to be live by March 2008, is expected to pay for itself within the year and will increase the amount the data available to Haven revenue managers to increase holiday yields.

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