Saltwater Hotels & Resorts

Saltwater Hotels & Resorts is a family owned specialist resort and serviced apartment manager based out of Melbourne, Australia. The group manages over thirty resorts, hotels and letting businesses across 6 states in Australia.

We spoke with Revenue Manager Adele Chambers about how she has been using technology to get ahead and help run a hospitality company with over 440 employees spread out across vast distances.

Old-School Frustrations

"Beforehand we were doing our revenue management manually – we had some rudimentary pricing set up in our PMS but it didn't always pick things up and it only ever pushed prices up and never down.

"FLYR for Hospitality came recommended from our friends at ALH Group. The legacy RMS players like IDeaS and Duetto were never an option as the implementation pricing is crazily high.

"I really subscribe to the philosophy of not focusing on CompSets. For us, CompSets aren't much use as our properties tend to be particularly unique and we often have a monopoly in many areas.

"Also, our inventory mix is complex and we needed an RMS that could handle that. We've got everything from guest rooms to serviced apartments to villas with their own pools."

Rapid Implementation

"The onboarding was super easy and fast. Everything is so self explanatory. We turned on one or two properties first and then the rest quickly followed. The two-way integration with RMS Cloud means that we could switch things on immediately."

Instant Results

"Our ADR has gone up across the board, particularly on our luxury products. Even compared to 2019, before the pandemic, ADRs have shot up. For example, at our property The Pearle the system was showing us a price of A$112 but now it's up at A$297 on FLYR for Hospitality forecasts.

"Some rates have gone up beyond what I would have expected but then the products sell! I've learnt to really trust the pricing algorithm. Our RevPAR has jumped up heaps!

"Pricing is also getting done as far out as twelve months. Demand for Easter next year is already going up! And that's something we would often overlook as we would never have had the time or resources to look at pricing anything that far out."

Commercial Intelligence

"We've built several new reports. There are a couple that used to take me a whole day to prepare and now it takes just seconds.

"I have a bunch of reports that go out to all the GMs every Monday and that's all automated. I've also given some of our GMs access themselves as it's so easy to use and ridiculously user friendly.

"We've now got a total of 41 scheduled reports going out every week and, remember, that's all automated! I couldn't be happier. It is giving me a lot of time back and that also means I no longer need to hire anyone else to help with RM."