Pegasus Apart’Hotels signs with SiteMinder and GTA, and triples online bookings

Pegasus Apart’Hotels is a 4-star hotel with a great range of facilities and 278 self-contained apartments in the heart of cosmopolitan Melbourne, Australia. Offering guests easy access to shopping and entertainment precincts, and full-sized functional offices within its SoHo suites, Pegasus appeals to both the business and leisure traveller alike.

Realising the potential for increased profits from the online market, in 2012, Pegasus joined more than 1,500 hotels around the world which have deployed two of the hotel industry’s leading technology suppliers, SiteMinder and GTA, to provide an integrated, two-way solution as a fail-proof way of distributing online.

Making online distribution easy

An experienced reservation manager, Emma Goldman had worked with various providers of channel management technology in the past. But when establishing Pegasus Apart’Hotels, Emma wanted a solution that was easy-to-use and provided advanced channel functionality.

Emma selected SiteMinder’s best-of-breed cloud platform, The Channel Manager, having recognised its market-leading ability to provide seamless online distribution for hotels and maximise their room bookings.

A key driving factor that led to Pegasus selecting SiteMinder’s Channel Manager was its pooled inventory model. The Channel Manager would allow Pegasus to continuously distribute its live rates and inventory to multiple booking channels, and deliver updates back into its property management system (PMS) in real-time. With pooled inventory, Pegasus could advertise all its rooms online, across all channels, all the time, without the fear of overbooking.

Creating profitable travel experiences

With a significant percentage of its guests still booking via travel agents, Pegasus’ online distribution strategy depended on access to wholesalers and it was crucial Emma found a solution that would make the hotel available where guests were searching.

In order to reach global travel agents, tour operators and travel intermediaries with one easy connection, Emma chose to partner with GTA. A leading travel wholesaler, GTA would provide Pegasus with a vast range of travel content to a global database of travel sellers. The company’s different contracting models – static rate model and margin agreement – help hotels to maximise their revenue.

Pegasus had always received significant business through static contracts that were optimised with connectivity to SiteMinder’s Channel Manager. However, Emma needed a solution that would provide the hotel with the same access to inventory but at a higher rate to complement existing business. In August 2013, Pegasus became one of the first hotels to sign a margin agreement with GTA.

Results

Three years after implementing both SiteMinder’s Channel Manager and GTA’s margin agreement model, in addition to the strong base business generated through GTA’s static contracts, Pegasus had:

• Tripled its online bookings
• Doubled its room nights and revenue
• Increased its average daily rate by more than 19%, thanks to the flexibility in pricing and yield management offered by GTA’s margin agreement.

By mid-2015, online channels accounted for 70% of Pegasus’ room reservations, which were all delivered directed into its PMS thanks to The Channel Manager’s two-way functionality. The platform’s pooled inventory model has enabled Pegasus to advertise and manage a total of 14 channels.

Emma says:

“SiteMinder has allowed our hotel to run with great efficiency, with real-time reservation delivery that keeps manpower numbers at a favourable level to support profitability. Further, the advancements our hotel has made using GTA’s distribution system put GTA in line with most of the top OTAs.

“The ability to manage rates and inventory electronically, with the added bonus of having reservations delivered directly into our PMS, makes working with SiteMinder and GTA a dream! It certainly beats receiving an emailed or faxed reservation and then having to input that and reply to the travel agent or tour operator.”

Using The Channel Manager’s live dashboard and comprehensive reports, combined with GTA’s wealth of data analyses, Pegasus has also benefited from insights into its destination and source markets.

And bookings and profits have not been the only thing to grow; staff productivity and efficiency levels have also risen dramatically since the deployment.

“Distribution is much easier today and we know we always have the options of static and BAR modules. SiteMinder and GTA, and their people, are clearly up-to-date with technology – and while they have a dynamic approach, they are still personable people to do business with,” says Emma.