All Posts
Dave Goulden
Jul 12 · 1 min read
Mix Master
Most hotel groups are investing in tools that cut operating costs. It’s rational. Operations is the biggest expense line on the P&L, and a few points of efficiency is real money. There’s a second lever that gets less attention and can return as much or more. It’s the total net revenue the commercial
Dave Goulden
Jul 8 · 1 min read
It's about time.
In 2010, Cornell surveyed nearly 500 hotel revenue managers about the future of the discipline. The consensus: revenue management would grow beyond the room. Total revenue, not just RevPAR. Profit, not just occupancy. Every revenue stream in the building, understood together. In 2017, Cornell asked
Dave Goulden
Jul 2 · 1 min read
"We don't have a spa."
Five words from a customer last week, and my favorite product moment so far. Context: a hotel commercial leader asked Ladera how to drive more weekend revenue at one of their properties. The analysis dug through the operating data, surfaced revenue opportunities the team hadn't been looking for. One
Dave Goulden
Jun 26 · 1 min read
Main dish, or garnish?
You've sat through the demo. A clean chat box, a question typed in, a confident answer a few seconds later. Ask it why last weekend's occupancy slipped, and it gives you a paragraph back, fast. It plates beautifully. Sometimes there's a real kitchen behind it. Usually, it's a sprig of parsley laid o
Dave Goulden
Jun 24 · 1 min read
Your data black box
You run revenue, or marketing, or sales, and you know your own numbers cold. It's the rest of your operating data that's a black box. You suspect it's messy. You're probably right. And you'd rather not open it. Who could blame you? Opening that box has always meant a six-figure cleanup, a team of co
Dave Goulden
Jun 9 · 1 min read
Trust but Verify
"AI can make mistakes. Check important info." You scroll past that line every day. In hospitality, it can cost you the quarter. Every day, your commercial team makes calls that move money. What rate to push. Where to shift spend. Which channel to lean into while pace is soft. Those decisions only mo
Dave Goulden
May 22 · 2 min read
Revenue is Job #1
We've been talking about all the right problems. And giving you zero reason to act. Data fragmentation, analytics silos, the half-blind commercial team — all true, all relevant, all missing the point. Someone on my team said it plainly this week: we never told you why this matters in the quarter you
Dave Goulden
May 18 · 1 min read
The Navigator
Your PMS knows reservations. Your RMS knows demand. Your POS knows spend. Your channel manager knows booking pace. None of them know what the others know. So your VP of Revenue Management exports from four systems, reconciles in Excel, and eventually gets an answer. Three days too late to act on it.
Dave Goulden
May 5 · 1 min read
New Rules
A 20-year revenue manager just gave notice. What walks out the door is the kind of judgment nobody wrote down: when to hold rate, when to drop, which OTA mix actually pays back in shoulder season, what October looks like the year ARI runs soft. That has been the deal in hospitality for as long as ho
Dave Goulden
Apr 28 · 2 min read
Abracadabra
Most AI demos in hospitality are magic tricks. The TRevPAR number looks confident. The RevPAR against the comp set sounds smart. The ADR trend across your PMS, whether Opera, Cloudbeds, or Mews, gets a clean narrative. Then the asset manager on the ownership call asks where the channel attribution c