If you are a hotel owner, manager, or corporate executive responsible for delivering a strong bottom line for your hotel(s) (and who isn’t), you need to speak to us because we have good news for you. We can identify for recovery money for your hotel property(s) you may not know is even available. The money in question is sitting in your properties Online Travel Agency (OTA) reservations account and you will to lose it if you do nothing to reconcile these reservations. Even though the money belongs to your property, your managers either do not know it exists, do not know how to claim it or simply get preoccupied with other duties and give it no attention.....so the money goes unclaimed until the Online Travel Agency keeps your money based on your contract with them.
Many hotel owners and managers are either surprised to hear that they have money available to them from the Online Travel Agency or they just simply don’t believe it, thinking it is too good to be true. Others simply choose not to acknowledge it, since they reason that if any outside agency such as, Revenue Recovery Specialists assists in recovery of lost revenue, it may be perceived as a negative refection on their performance. Still others, confidently say that they as a company "we are on top of our game" and do a good job in accounting. After all, they reason that they have systems in place to catch this. If you are that confident, let us say congratulations and good job; HOWEVER, in our experience we have found that not to be the case. Every hotel that we have completed an Online Travel Agency audit, we have found money available for them. Money that would eventually be lost to the hotel or hotel owner while not even seeing a loss!
So how is it that the money goes unclaimed? It can happen in several ways and here are just a few. Sometimes it happens during the initial reservation call and before the guest checks in, especially on reservation changes. Other times it occurs at the front desk during the check in process. Desk clerks are relatively new employees, most make minimum wage, they are expected to know so much on the first day and turnover is always high. When the customer checks in, the clerk sees a prepaid reservation, checks the guest in and does not transfer information to the property management system. The “financial loop” does not get closed, so the hotel does not get credited properly, leaving the money unclaimed and in the Online Travel Agency account. Perhaps we should talk about it.
It also happens at all levels of back office management since most managers are not taught to look for it. Supervisors, Managers, Night Auditors and even the General Managers do not check this properly, so the money goes unclaimed. Unfortunately, the owners and investors never see the money and the management company loses a percentage of revenue as well while the Online Travel Agency continues to pad their own pockets.
The Revenue Recovery Specialists solution is to perform a simple no cost audit of your online travel agency reservations. A "Discovery" audit will tell you exactly what the amount of unclaimed revenue is available for your property to collect from the Online Travel Agency. We will then provide the means to the hotel for its recovery. The money is available and has been set aside for months waiting for it to be claimed by you. The Online Travel Agency is holding it knowing a vast majority of hotels and resorts will not ask for it. The Online Travel Agency keeps hundreds of millions of dollars each year by simply sitting on your money and waiting you out!
If you want to have a confidential, no obligation regarding opportunities that might be available for your properties, contact us at 407-915-3700 or sales at 407-284-0900. You can even email us at larry@contactrrs.com.