Unlock growth with expert revenue management

In this Lighthouse live event hosted by Adam Dick, Senior Director of Revenue Strategy Services (RSS), and Virginia McShane, Senior Manager (RSS), the spotlight was firmly on how Lighthouse’s Revenue Strategy Services team utilizes Rate Insight and Business Intelligence (BI) tools unlock performance potential for hotels. 

A personal, data-driven approach to revenue management

Forget the one-size-fits-all approach. As Adam explained, Lighthouse’s RSS team partners with more than 350 hotels across North America, offering tailor-made commercial strategies instead of cookie-cutter solutions. This team gets granular, looking at each property’s specific market, goals, and online presence to build strategies that are both customized and backed by real-time data.

However, the Lighthouse RSS team does more than just crunch numbers, they focus on helping hoteliers understand the “why” behind their pricing, performance, and positioning, empowering them to act faster and smarter.

Business Intelligence: The heart of smarter decisions

Virginia took attendees on a quick tour of Lighthouse’s BI platform, describing it as their daily go-to for visualizing a hotel’s commercial performance. BI acts as a central command center for the Revenue Strategy Services team. It’s where performance is analyzed, strategies are built, and insights are shared with clients during revenue calls.

One powerful use case highlighted was evaluating room type premiums. For hotels, understanding whether that $50 premium on a deluxe room is working - or if it's just leading to upgrades without extra revenue - is key. Within Business Intelligence, revenue managers can:

• Compare room type performance year-over-year

• Spot underperforming segments by room type

• Analyze room-type performance by day-of-week and rate plan

• Pinpoint where pricing or inventory strategy might need adjusting

This allows revenue managers to ask better questions on their strategy calls: Are we upgrading too often? Are we charging a premium that's too steep…or not steep enough?

Rate Insight: Compset comparisons in an instant

Analyzing competitor room type premiums used to mean endless browser tabs and sometimes hours of manual work in a spreadsheet. Rate Insight makes this a breeze. Within a couple of clicks, hotels can see how their premiums compare against competitors in real-time.

Virginia illustrated how hoteliers (especially those with unique room types like vineyard-view lodges or ocean-facing suites) can compare apples to apples (or apples to oranges, if that’s what the market demands). The platform shows:

• Your standard and premium room pricing

• Competitor rates and their room categories

• Price gaps and premium percentages between your hotel and the compset

Rate Insight allows revenue managers see the big-picture across the entire compset, and decide if they're missing upcharge opportunities, or overpricing rooms and pushing away potential bookings.

Daily strategy made simple

In the webinar, Virginia also walked through the daily strategy module in BI. This tool lets hotels view inventory levels, pricing, and competitive rates on a daily basis—all in one place. This view is popular with revenue managers who want to:

• Know exactly how many rooms you have left for a forward-looking arrival date

• Evaluate a pricing change on the fly

• Monitor where pickup and demand are stronger/softer than normal

Instead of juggling an arrival report from the PMS, a stale .pdf rate shop, and rate screen across multiple windows, BI consolidates everything. Need to know if $249 is the right price for Friday night when you’ve got just four rooms left? It’s all right there.

Beyond room types: Rate plan performance

Lighthouse doesn’t stop at room types and rate shops. Virginia then turned the focus to rate plan performance, analyzing which rate types are working—and which aren’t. The BI Accounts module feature lets hoteliers evaluate performance over any time frame, sliced by:

• Channels (direct, OTA, etc.)

• Length of stay

• Market segment, rate plan description, or company name

• Displacement

Seeing deficits in direct bookings, or a corporate account that only produces on Tuesday night? BI helps commercial strategists diagnose where there are opportunities, and to begin implementing new strategies.

Winning with discounts and parity

The session emphasized how crucial competitive discounting and rate parity are for success. Using Rate Insight’s strategy tab, hoteliers can instantly benchmark their non-refundable and LOS discounts against competitors. No more mystery pricing—hoteliers get the full picture.

Virginia highlighted the risks of mismanaged parity: unauthorized rates from OTAs, discount stacking, and parity violations that can erode direct bookings. The Lighthouse team works directly with OTAs to resolve these issues—sometimes even booking test reservations to trace the problem.

The RSS advantage: Experts on your side

To close the session, Adam reinforced the value of Lighthouse’s Revenue Strategy Services. Whether you need temporary support (like during a system transition or staffing gap) or want ongoing consultation, RSS acts as an extension of your team.

What sets Lighthouse RSS apart?

• Platform expertise: Deep knowledge of Lighthouse tools - the tools that are developed in-house are pressure tested by real life revenue managers.

• Holistic strategy: Bridging the gap between data, digital, and distribution

• Flexible support: Task force or full-service options

• Tech-savvy service: Automated reporting meets human insight with custom reporting and daily snapshot.

And it all comes back to a single mission: helping hoteliers act with confidence.

Final thoughts

As with all Lighthouse products, our main focus is turning complexity into clarity. With real-time insights, intuitive tools, and a team of pros behind the scenes, Lighthouse is helping hoteliers do what they do best—run successful, profitable businesses without losing sleep over spreadsheets.

Want to know how Lighthouse can support your hotel? The RSS team is just a conversation away.