Sarova Hotels

Sarova Hotels is a group of independently owned hotels and health clubs spread across the south of England. From 'The Rembrandt' in London's glamorous neighbourhood of Knightsbridge to the 'Sir Christopher Wren' beneath the ramparts of Windsor Castle, the luxury group has a broad offering for both business and leisure travellers.

We spoke with Group Revenue Manager Jon Siberry about their digital transformation.

Old-School Frustrations

"We were doing revenue management manually beforehand – we had a homemade RM system that I had designed and built myself over the years in Excel. It was a big sheet…and we had been running it for 15 years.

"We then heard about FLYR for Hospitality and found the rate recommendation and the analytics part of the system particularly intriguing. A human simply can't do that volume of analysis and the cost of the platform seemed a lot more affordable than we had expected based on the legacy options.

"The platform's simplicity was one of the big draws. It's easy to navigate around – you just login and go to the pricing module. We have a few different people who look at different data and charts, including two directors, so ease-of-use was essential.

"Another big USP was that it's always pricing up to 365 days out, which we could never do manually with humans and a big Excel spreadsheet!"

Instant Results

"Our ADR is now considerably higher than it was at the same time in 2019. We're also pretty much back to full capacity again and have had several nights at full occupancy.

"Efficiency savings from switching have been massive for us. Manual rate updating in Opera is a real hassle! It not only takes up a lot of time but it is hugely prone to mistakes! To be able to do it all with a click of a button is a huge saving!"

Commercial Intelligence

"The Business Intelligence tool is great as well. It's clean and simple to use. There is a lot of good data in there and I personally look at the pickup chart a lot as it's super easy to see how much we have picked up per day. You can quickly spot the good and the bad days."