Radisson Hotels runs revenue management systems with Freshservice

About Radisson Hotels

With nine distinctive brands and more than 1500 hotels worldwide in operation and development, Radisson Hotel Group is one of the largest hotel chains in the world. As part of its strategic five-year plan, the company is undergoing a transformation, unifying several key functions in centers of excellence. One of these centers focuses on revenue management. The Revenue Systems Hub for 400 hotels in Europe and Africa, located in Madrid, has recently started using Freshservice to efficiently manage the team's workflow.

Managing service requests within Revenue Management

Benjamin Muratet leads the revenue technology and distribution team, part of the wider revenue management organization, as Vice President of RevTech and Distribution. "Revenue management is a discipline that aims to optimize the price and occupancy of hotels by presenting the right price to the right customer at the right time and through the right channel," Muratet says. "Those distribution channels are highly diverse. Customers can book through our own website, platforms such as Booking.com or Expedia, or by phone. Business customers who want to rent a room or organize a conference at one of our venues first request a quote. In other words, quite a few IT systems are involved in the background when determining the right price. We ensure that all systems are connected seamlessly. This means our hotels must be easy to find on booking websites, all systems are supplied with the correct availability information in real time, and customers are presented with the same price through various channels. We are responsible not only for managing this systems' universe but also for implementing new software and providing training to the hotel teams who will work with this software."

Efficiently distributing the workload

The Revenue Systems Hub for EMEA receives 40 to 50 service requests per day. These can range from simple requests about how to use an application to technically complex challenges that take the team a week to resolve. To gain more insight into the workload and better distribute the work among the 20 specialists, the team identified a clear need for a tool-supported process. Revenue Systems Supervisor Aitor Selgas says, "Previously, requests were submitted to us by email. The context of the requests was not always immediately clear, resulting in lengthy email exchanges. Before you know it, you have hundreds of emails each day and lose sight of the big picture. It's impossible to set priorities or properly distribute the workload across the team. We decided to find a tool that could help us structure the assistance process for our main clients: the hotels."

Tailored to Radisson’s unique customer use-case

An internet search yielded a list of possible vendors and applications. Freshworks immediately stood out. "They instantly caught our eye because, from the very first contact online, they actively asked questions about what exactly we were looking for and where our challenges lay," says Muratet. Freshservice’s flexibility made it well-suited to the purpose Radisson Hotel Group had in mind. The price-performance ratio was also spot on.

"In addition, I heard from some people in my network that Freshworks is an excellent partner to work with. I think that’s important. We are not just buying a subscription for a SaaS tool; we are entering into a partnership with the vendor," says Muratet. That partnership is what Freshworks is all about, Selgas explains: "For example, we have a bi-monthly call with the Freshworks team where we discuss how to get even more out of the application. Freshworks sees how often we use certain functionalities and what opportunities we leave under-utilized. They then coach us on these. That’s great because there's so much you can do with the tool."

Structured information gathering

The implementation of the tool was easy and quick. In advance, the Freshworks team had prepared in advance an analysis of all the service requests over the last six months. These are classified into 23 categories. For each category, Selgas has designed a form in Freshservice that hotels can use to submit their service requests. 

This saved the team a lot of work, as Selgas explains, "We are now receiving the information in a structured and complete manner right from the start. We no longer have to email back and forth before we have all the data right from the start. We already see a steep improvement in turnaround time for service requests." The team sees at a glance what types of requests are coming in and can therefore distribute the work much more quickly to the appropriate specialists. "Our response time now averages between two and three days. That’s a lot shorter than it used to be. Easy requests we handle during the same day, complicated jobs can take a week," says Selgas. "Our goal is to reduce the response time to a maximum of two days. With the automation services in Freshservice, I'm sure we will reach this goal. Further improvements in the turnaround time will be achieved through cross-checking with previous solutions and by automating our response library. For example, we want to build a library of information we have used before, so that we can find the right answer much more quickly."

Support for working from home

Muratet is pleased with this move to support his expert team with automation and focus on value-added tasks. The efficiency advantage helped the team with the new working conditions imposed by the global COVID-19 pandemic. "The emphasis is now on efficiency, even more than it was before. In addition, most of the team is working from home. If you want to organise the work well, transparency and structure is a prerequisite. Freshservice offers us that transparency. We no longer need face-to-face work meetings to distribute the workload, we do it in Freshservice." As travel starts to recover, it is even more important for hotels to provide a smooth booking experience on the RadissonHotels.com website or to be found easily on various booking platforms. This means that revenue management has become even more important.