Marta Romero

📊 During WWII, analysts like Abraham Wald identified critical areas on bomber planes without damage as key to increasing survival, leading to the concept of "survivorship bias". In hotel demand analysis, this bias overlooks failed sales opportunities. To fully understand a hotel's real demand, key performance indicators (KPIs) such as generated reservations, cancellations, and unconverted demand must be analyzed. Improving areas of unmet demand can increase sales without additional costs. Strategies include adjusting pricing, distribution rules, and inventory management to capitalize on existing demand and improve profitability. The analysis aims to maximize outcomes by focusing on missed opportunities rather than solely on successes.

🏨 Hotels do not generate demand on their own, except in rare cases like Ushuaïa in Ibiza. Demand generation vs. demand capture: hotels should focus on capturing demand where they can compete. Key demand generators include destinations, tour operators, airlines/railways, and major media outlets, with social media becoming increasingly accessible and impactful. Cinetourism moves almost 100 million tourists annually, with Gen Z favoring social media over Google for travel inspiration. Hotels compete with metasearch and OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) in capturing demand. Effective demand attraction by hotels involves understanding the customer, maintaining a competitive and attractive product, managing online reputation, monitoring prices, offering promotions, running specific marketing campaigns, ensuring visibility, and analyzing real hotel demand to plan strategies. Direct sales can derive demand toward channels with lower intermediation costs. It's vital for hotels to focus on existing demand and plan distribution strategies accordingly.