As many properties in North America surpass pre-pandemic performance levels, some European-based hotel technology companies are setting up offices across the pond in order to capture clients in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, as well as in the Caribbean.
One such software company is Stockholm, Sweden-based Demand Calendar, a provider of an all-in-one system that combines hotel revenue management, business intelligence and B2B sales customer relationship management.
Founded by Anders Johansson, who serves as CEO, Demand Calendar was created to solve three problems the hotel industry faces: attracting more guests, increasing sales per guest and preventing revenue leaks.
“By focusing on these three key areas, hotels could optimize their strategies and capitalize on growth opportunities, leading to enhanced revenue generation and long-term success in the highly competitive hospitality industry,” he said.
Before founding Demand Calendar, Johansson worked as an industry consultant and strategist. He also spent 18 years teaching strategic revenue management at Örebro University in Sweden, but said he often struggled to find and access relevant, actionable data and insights for making the right decisions to grow revenue and maximize profits.
“I envisioned creating a comprehensive solution to address these challenges head-on,” he said. “I saw an opportunity to develop an intuitive, insightful and interactive tool that would help all roles in a hotel make the right decisions and free up time for more critical work.”
In order to create the right solution to attack these problems, the CEO turned to KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, which, he said, has a reputation as one of Europe’s leading technical and engineering universities.
“I met Alexander Yngling and Oscar Frykholm, two Ph.D. students with exceptional skills in their respective fields,” he said. “Alexander specialized in database and systems design, while Oscar was a user experience expert. Their combined expertise was exactly what I needed to bring Demand Calendar to life.”
Demand Calendar’s SMART (Sales, Marketing And Revenue Technology) Suite helps hoteliers with three important tasks to profitability.
Demand Calendar performs a number of tasks, including customer acquisition cost evaluation.
Its total revenue management solution “optimizes all revenue sources for maximized profits,” noted Johansson, by automating data collection and easily accessible information; tracking customer acquisition costs; and forecasting and budgeting total revenue.
Its hotel sales management platform contributes to revenue growth through sales team performance enhancement and corporate/travel agent customer profitability business intelligence, while hotel marketing analytics help refine strategies to optimize marketing efforts.
Johansson pointed out that Demand Calendar’s development started with a focus on forecasting, “as a reasonably accurate forecast is essential for guiding hotel pricing, campaigns, contracts, staff scheduling, purchasing and financial planning.” However, he said, “Understanding the skepticism hoteliers and revenue managers often have towards ‘black-box’ forecasting systems, the team designed a module that calculates forecasts using data-driven methods while presenting all relevant information.”
The software integrates with a number of hotel-based platforms, including property management systems (PMS), benchmarking systems, rate-shopping systems, revenue management systems (RMS) and any other system that pulls revenue/transactional data.
“Hotels need various data types, such as customer demographics, booking patterns, pricing, market trends, destination demand, competitor information and internal performance metrics— such as total revenue, reservation data, pickup, on-the-books and occupancy patterns—to make informed decisions,” said Johansson.
The company currently has 44 hotel clients in Europe but has yet to add any in the U.S.
“We just recently hired a director of sales based in the U.S., Caren de’Ath,” he said. “We have been doing presentations for consultants and several U.S. hotel groups and will have a signed contract shortly.”
