ARTHURAndersen has launched an Internet site that allows hotels to benchmark their performance against their closest competitors.
Called KnowledgeSpace, the site set up by the consultants contains information about occupancies, room rates and room revenue for the majority of the major chains in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Arthur Andersen global partner for hospitality and leisure, Alex Kyriakidis, said the information was vital for hoteliers but was also useful for tour operators and travel agents.
“Tour operators can look at a particular city to find out what occupancies and rates are doing and use this to put together packages. For corporate agencies, they can see whether hotels in a particular city are full at a certain time of the year so they can plan ahead for their requirements.”
The site also provides research surveys and up-to-date news through a link with Reuters and other publications, including Travel Weekly.
If a hotel wants to compare its performance with its rivals, it can input its details and will receive information about a composite of specific competitors.
“Hotels won’t be able to see the individual performance of their competitors but, for example, the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park would be able to see an average of how other upmarket hotels in the West End are performing,” saidKyriakidis.
Details about properties in Asia Pacific will be added to the site at the end of this month and data on hotels in Latin America will be loaded by the end of the summer.
Kyriakidis said information about hotels in North America would not be included until at least the end of this year.
“When we did our research, we found there was already some benchmarking data available in the US but they said they did not have access to similar information about international hotels. Therefore, our priority was to get the international hotels on first,” he said.
Some information on the Internet site is free while there are various subscription charges for deeper analysis. It can be found at:
www.knowledgespace.com