Total Profit Optimization - Billy Copelan, Sea Island Resorts & Jason Freed, MDO [Sponsored]

Josiah: 0:00

Total revenue management sounds like something for revenue managers, right? Well, it's actually important for all hospitality providers to understand, whether you work in revenue management or not. Jason Freed, Hospitality Data Evangelist at MDO, and Billy Copelan, director of Revenue Management at Sea Island Resorts, share with us what total revenue optimization is, why it matters to all of us, and what opportunities it can create for you. Jason and Billy, thank you so much for joining me today. I've been looking forward to this conversation. Jason, you and I have known each other for some time. When we initially connected, you were, and remain, one of the best journalists that I've come across. Just somebody who is always curious, always looking for interesting stories, always looking for who's doing interesting things, bringing some innovation to our industry. It's been awesome to work together in a past life and then now look at what you're doing now in your current role, but for our listeners. Can you tell us a little bit about your role today, what you're focused on, and then we'll pass the mic over to Billy.

Jason: 1:23

Yeah, awesome, What a great introduction. Like Josiah said, former journalist, and I guess what that means is I got really good at asking questions And I've been doing that for 15 years in the hospitality industry, just talking to the smartest people doing the most innovative things and trying to help tell their story and really help us as an industry all get better at what we do. So I'm excited to have Billy on with us. Billy has helped me over the past couple months really unpack this topic of total profit optimization And there's two parts to that. It's at a high level, looking at all of the revenue sources at your property outside of just room's revenue and bringing in the data from all those ancillary revenue sources and then really understanding how that revenue flows through to the bottom line, And Billy again has been instrumental in all the things that he's doing at his core property. So I'm excited to hear from him a little bit about Sea Island.

Josiah: 2:17

Billy, I want to hear all about your role and what you're focused on, but, if I understand, you actually study journalism in school as well. So tell us about your role and then kind of walk us back. How'd you get to your role today?

Billy: 2:26

Sure, okay, well, i'm the director of revenue management for Sea Island Resort. I've actually been with the company for over 31 years, so it's a great place to be, a great place to work. I really have been in the revenue management side of the resort probably since about 2004-ish, i think is probably when we first introduced revenue management to Sea Island. We had never had any kind of yielding of rates or anything like that before. We were an iconic Southern resort. We've been around for 95 years. This is actually our 95th anniversary this year. We were founded in 1928. And up until the early 2000s, basically, we had a rate card. We set our rates at the beginning of the year and that was it. So the rates were the rates, and we brought in our first yield manager around 2003-ish I believe, which was a totally foreign concept to us here, because, again, we just quoted rates literally off a piece of paper. And so she came in and started saying well, we can yield our rates based on lots of different factors, and so we started doing that. I was actually at that time working in the reservations department. I was in charge of our group reservations as well as overseeing the reservations office as well, and so I started working closely with this person that came in as our first yield manager And just really kind of it piqued my interest And I started kind of really enjoying digging into data and looking at things through a totally different lens than what we had ever done here before. So that just piqued my interest, really got me started and then had some great tutors that came through. We had a couple of different revenue managers, if you will, that came through in a few years' time And then eventually I took over the role of director of revenue management. So Just you know, rocking a roll in ever since.

Josiah: 4:24

I always love to hear people stories, so thank you for sharing that. I wonder if we could set the stage a little bit. You know we are listeners, are span almost every imaginable role within hospitality from investors to operators And I guess I just want to level set expectations. This is not just a revenue management conversation, even though we're talking about revenue management, how we think about pricing and how we think about the revenue that we bring into our businesses and flowing to the bottom line enables everything it right and enables us to hire talented people. It enables us to create phenomenal Experiences, so this topic really matters, regardless of where you're at in the ecosystem. Earlier in this week, I attended the NYU hospitality investment conference and this was a constant topic of panelists, from CEOs of major global brands to other participants, and so, Jason, maybe I'll pass the mic to you I want to hear a little bit what Got you kind of thinking about this notion of total revenue optimization and what inspired you to create this report.

Jason: 5:24

Yeah, I think you probably heard a lot about this at NYU as well. Josiah STR released their most recent forecast and you know, I think what you can take from that is, yes, we've had, we've the industry has done a great job at raising rates to stay in pace with inflation and drive a lot of that top-line revenue, but we know that the associated costs are growing as well. It's, you know, just as fast, if not faster, and if you look at what str is forecasting over the next year, it's, yes, continued revenue growth, but then slowed, if not decreased, profit margins. And the reason is just that it's all the costs associated with running a hotel, whether you know, as we all know, labor is the biggest one all the things you've got to put in the hotel, all the amenities, all the toilet paper, food costs all that continue to rise. So it's a hot topic, right to your point, and it's something that we have to look at more closely. And I think, in talking to a lot of people about this topic, i've sort of come up with a definition of what total profit optimization is, and certainly I'm not the first person to talk about it, but it's, it's really the act of broadening your operational strategies to include focus on all the revenue generating areas in a hotel, not just rooms. And Then the second part is being able to measure the flow of each of those outlets to determine optimal profitability. And look, i you know The base is not new here. Every business looks at their profitability, of course, and everybody, you know every hotel measures how profitable they are in the end. But I think what's new is, you know, over the recent years the amount of data really that's available to hotel operators has grown so much That we can really look more holistically at all the revenue outlets across the property and determine which areas are driving most of the bottom line.

Josiah: 7:10

Yeah, i really want to get your take on this. But, Jason, just a quick follow-up on that and so people understand. For context, at MDO You're providing insight into the performance right? You have business intelligence software that is providing hoteliers with visibility here.

Jason: 7:27

Yeah, so a homegrown business intelligence solution. And then, you know, we've went through several acquisitions over the past 18 months to build out that BI platform And are really now just on the cusp of launching our new BI platform, which does exactly what you just said. It's built on solid integrations that bring data in from all these different revenue sources and then serving them up in the way you Want to see them, and whether that's templated reports that you want to share with stakeholders, or Getting really custom and really granular with some of the data Which Billy and his team have done over the years and and it's really cool to see that come come to fruition.

Josiah: 8:05

Fantastic. And how do you work with other revenue management technologies? It sounds like you would partner with a revenue management system to do the actual pricing and then your software comes in to provide visibility and insight. Is that the way to think about it?

Jason: 8:18

Yeah, that's exactly it. So we ingest forecast data, we ingest room level data from the revenue management systems and then serve it up alongside all the other outlets and all the other things you're measuring, like your GSS scores, your STR, your labor costs. So, like in sort of one visual dashboard, you can see that forecast and your pace and your pickup alongside all of those other metrics.

Josiah: 8:43

Billy, I want to turn it to you because I'm really fascinated how you're thinking about this notion of total revenue optimization. What is that to you?

Billy: 8:51

Here at Sea Island we are a very expansive resort, so we have multiple like 16 different dining outlets, We have all kinds of recreational activities, from golf to in a spa, we have water sports, we have hunting and hunting club, we have nature programming, a bowling alley So we have so many different what we call verticals. And, as Jason mentioned, being able to number one capture all the data is just a huge thing. But being able to capture it and then put it into usable forms for all of our leadership in our different areas, that is, i think, the key in trying to do that total optimization of the revenue for the entire resort. Because obviously every person that in each leader in their perspective areas, they've got to own their own business, so to speak. They've got to make sure that what they're doing is helping to get the right money to the bottom line, which then obviously helps the total company. So that's where using the business intelligence has been so instrumental. For us is to give those leaders all that data at their fingertips, but in a very digestible format and a very easy to use so that they can understand it. Number one, because you know a lot of chefs are not data people normally, and so they need to be able to easily digest it and be able to understand and then relay it to their staff and the people that they're working with in their department, so that we can drive the most profit to the bottom line.

Josiah: 10:20

Excellent, and I think what you mentioned, Billy, fascinates me, because this show is not hotels daily, it's Hospitality Daily. For a reason because I think the opportunity to show hospitality, the business potential for hospitality, is actually much bigger, as we all know, than just hotels, and your resort is one of the best examples of this. All the things that you mentioned so many different outlets, there's so many ways to earn money to delight guests, which is really exciting, and I'm kind of curious how you're thinking about applying some revenue management principles to some of these more ancillary outlets and maximizing the total revenue for the property.

Billy: 10:55

Yeah, the two big areas that we're kind of our focus coming up in, you know, the second half of this year and into next year, we're really looking at golf and spa as the two that we're going to really want to tackle first, i guess, as far as really trying to implement some revenue management strategies and processes, we've already started that with our golf. in one, one instance We actually formed a golf package team. So now, when, you know, because we golf is a huge part of our business, we have three championship golf courses. we host our own PGA tour event in the fall called the RSM Classic. So golf is huge, huge part of our business. So we actually formed a golf package team. So when someone's calling in looking for a guys trip to come play golf, because we are, you know, we consider ourselves a bucket list place for golf and many people do across the country. So we have a team that's totally dedicated to basically building customized packages. And so we use the data of our golf. You know, we use what are our highest demand times of day, days of the week, all those types of things that we we pull from our, our business intelligence And then we price our golf tea times based on that in our packages. So we really build a custom package on the fly, so to speak, as we're, you know, as we're talking to the guests, or maybe they, you know, maybe they fill out an RFP on our website about a golf trip And so we give them a custom quote and we customize those tea times based on the time of day, the day of week, you know, obviously the month they might be coming and playing. And so we've seen a huge increase in really boosting our revenue on what was considered our lowest performing course. We've actually increased revenue there because we've been able to price it at a different price structure than, necessarily, our two more premier courses. So it's actually driven more business. you know, for those that might be looking for a little bit different value or more value, obviously, you know everybody wants to play our premier course, you know, at least once when they're here, but then they might not necessarily want to play it two or three times. So we've been able to drive more business to our you know again, it's a very nice course, but our third course, so to speak. So that's one, one area that we've been able to really already see some of that. And then the next step is looking at spa as well, because there's obviously a huge amount of potential there to drive pricing on spa. again, looking at demand of time, of services, you know time of day, day of week and all that type of thing. It's a little, you know, we're there's a little more resistance from the spa world on that, at least in our spa world, because you know they're very used to having kind of like I was talking about with our room rates of a rate card and here's our services and here's how much they cost. So you know, getting them to understand you know we might can vary our prices could actually drive more revenues. you know, getting getting to that, getting over that hurdle, so to speak, will be our next challenge, but we're looking forward to that as well.

Jason: 13:49

It's all about the data Billy, just showing the data right. Show them what, show them where, absolutely hitting the bottom line, and they'll, they'll, convert.

Billy: 13:56

Yes, yes, well, that I know. I mean I will say our golf, our director of golf, i mean he was a little, you know, a little hesitant when we were like We're gonna discount this course a little more than what you would normally do to build it into this golf package. And you know, i could see his eyes just kind of be like what wait, what you know? and but now we've proven to him He's making more revenue on that course by, you know, letting us do that because we're getting a more volume on that course. We've had a great win there, which is great to be able then to take that to other departments within our organization and show them. Here's our case, teddy. We've we've already done it. We've done it successfully, so we can do that for you too.

Josiah: 14:31

So yeah, yeah. It's awesome to see you bring more revenue into the business, because be again like we were talking about this is good for everybody And it allows you to do more. It allows you to provide an incredible Experience. You mentioned something, i think, earlier that caught my attention, though to the point of analytics and insight. Did you have somebody working at one of your restaurants that has now been able to take one of these reports and make smarter business decisions on it?

Billy: 14:58

Yeah, absolutely our executive chef. He kind of leads our entire overseas, the entire, you know, food and beverage operation And he yes, we've, we've been able to, not just me, but we have a great team within our finance department that does a lot of the Operational forecasting and things. So that, you know, i I kind of do the rooms forecasting, they take what I do, plug it into their models that helps the operations then forecast for their different departments And he's they've built out several models or templates that basically allow the chefs in the different areas, the different outlets, they can input their food cost and you know they're different things, you know that vary on a, you know, daily basis or a weekly basis or whatever the case may be. They can basically because we've built out These templates with formulas that are pulling in the data from from our own business intelligence tool. Then it can update and give them real time Forecast of here's where you are, bottom line, based on the inputs that you've put in and then using Historical data from you know number of covers we've had in the past and you know average check prices and all those types of things that are built In into the kind of the back end of it that the chef doesn't have to know, he doesn't need to see all that, he just knows he can input his his main data and then refresh it and it gives him the output of where he stands on that day Or week or month or so. Yeah, we've. That's a great success story that we have with him.

Jason: 16:19

I think Billy's being a little humble. I got a chance to meet that, his executive chef. His name's Danny Zeal. It's a really amazing story. It's awesome. He's, as most executives chef started in the kitchen cooking, you know, as a sous chef. I think his first job at Sea Island was as a sous chef and he's, you know, really evolved from a chef into a data analyst. I mean he's keeping a running P&L. He can tell you, you know, he can forecast how many steaks are gonna sell that night within one or two and he's, you know, measuring down to which servers are upselling the most and Just doing some really amazing things with, with data in the kitchen. I mean Sea Island, from what I hear about it I've never been it seems like an amazing place. You can go out on like a fishing excursion, catch fish, bring it back. They'll clean it for you and serve it to you right there. And you know you've got to. You've got to have data on all that stuff to to know where, what areas to put focus on and What areas you can sort of dynamically price.

Josiah: 17:16

I Love that, jason. I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about a metric that you know some of our listeners are gonna be familiar, someone's gonna be brand new. But TotalRevPAR notion of , what is it? and you know how does, how might it affect how we think about operating properties?

Jason: 17:32

So I've got some really interesting insight as I was putting this report together on on trev par. Trev par is total revenue per available room, so it's really looking outside of the rooms revenue and including things like Billy mentioned golf, spa, f&b, parking, sometimes even resort fees are considered in your total rev par. It's still a top-line measurement, right. So it's you're looking at revenue as it comes in, but it really helps you compare and contrast what outlets are performing well. You know, i think, as we've seen More travelers coming to hotels and staying in hotels during cove it and even post cove it, these ancillary revenue sources I've picked up as well, and it's interesting what you can do with this data, with this trev par data, right. So, on one hand, it's great for benchmarking How am I doing compared to my competitive set? You guys are probably aware that str has launched a PNL Product so you can benchmark things like trev GOPPAR,, , EBITA per available room, total labor cost. But then, on the other hand, not just is it great for benchmarking But, as Billy has spoken to, it's great for making operational decisions, right. So you know, it gets really interesting when you start to look at which of these outlets are performing better in terms of a profit, a margin. You know which of these sources that revenue is it flowing through to the bottom line and which areas is it flowing more to the bottom line in. And You start to think of, like okay, if I can mark up my spa treatments this much and I can mark up, you know, parking this much and you don't have that mark up a bit, availability with rooms a lot of times right, because you're competing with the guy across the street and you know if you raise your room rooms You may lose out on some occupancy. But with these ancillary outlets you have more. So that's there, more sort of experience driven, and you have more opportunity to push some rates there. And then you start to think of, like, okay, you know how much focus should I put on the spawn in the FMB department versus the rooms department? And it leads to some interesting conversations and decisions.

Josiah: 19:32

It seems like Billy, anything you'd add to that on this metric?

Billy: 19:37

Yeah, i mean again just kind of echoing what Jason said, but that's one thing that we've been looking at for several years. I mean, i've built out kind of a whole suite of reporting that I update monthly We call it our ancillary spend report that I update every month, send out which shows, by every department that we have, every outlet that we have, how much we're getting in revenue from, not only just by month, by day of week, by type of guests, whether it be a transient guest or a group guest. We can totally look at who's spending the most in our different outlets, comparing it to the prior months, comparing it to the same months last year, all of our outlets. They can look at that and they can really see how they're trending against what we've done historically, how they're trending. Just this year We've focused a lot on looking at the total revenue and our total ancillary spend, because we have an incredibly high one here. We have incredibly high room rates thanks to me, right But we also have a really high ancillary spend from our guests. We're always looking at and concerned about the balance because we're looking for that tipping point, so to speak, because if we continue to raise room rates, that's great, but at some point, if that starts declining our ancillary spend because we kind of laugh here. We even say even rich people have a budget when they go on vacation At some point we might get more in room rate but if they start not spending as much in our outlets, that's not what we want. We're always kind of looking at that balance of making sure that our ancillary spend is growing as well as our room rate And hopefully the ancillary spend may be even growing at a little faster rate than room rates. But yeah, we've been looking at that for many years. That's one thing I love working here at Sea Island. Our president and CEO is a very data-driven person. Every report that I do, everything I put out. If there's a mistake in it, he's going to be the first person that finds it. He's going to be the one to call me, but he really relies on that information. That just helps permeate through the organization to all the levels of how important it is to analyze the state and continue to look at it and to make sure we're doing the most profitable thing for the operation.

Jason: 21:44

Let me ask you something, Billy. This is something I asked a couple of people as I was putting this report together and I found it super interesting. It's the idea of, okay, if we can make higher profit margins on golf and spa than we do on the rooms, would it ever just a crazy thought? would you ever say, okay, we're not in the hotel business anymore, We're going to be in the spa business or we're going to be a golf resort? I don't think that would ever apply to you guys, because you're a destination, But I did hear some interesting responses to that where some, and it helps you build your strategy. So, some places you've got to book a hotel room to be able to golf there right. Or you've got to book a hotel room to attend the spa, or vice versa right. And I think that having that information helps you develop those marketing strategies.

Billy: 22:34

Yeah, absolutely. I mean we are a little unique because we are a private, because we also have a membership component for Seattle and we have a club. So we have probably around 2,000 memberships, probably represents eight or 9,000 members. So we are private. So to use any of our facilities and the amenities of our two five-star hotels you have to either be a guest a member or a guest of a member. To answer your question, would we ever become a golf resort and just golf? you know, letting that drive? Probably not. You have to have, again, have that stay with us to be able to use our facilities and amenities. But, you know, certainly we look at the different pieces of our operation within that And if golf is more profitable, then we, as we've done, we've created that golf package team that I mentioned, you know, because we know that golf is very profitable for us And we had some capacity still. So let's try to really take advantage of that, capitalize on that.

Josiah: 23:34

Jason, anything that you've seen in doing the research for this report along kind of this notion of better understanding and measuring profit margins, that stood out to you.

Jason: 23:43

Yeah, just that. Having this data available, you know, not only to you to make better decisions with, but being able to share it with key stakeholders. I think that's a big part of it. I think that's a big part of Billy's job is putting those reports together and keeping everybody informed. You know asset managers, owners, operators they want to wake up and see the stuff in their inbox and be able to look through. You know how do we do yesterday, how are we forecasting to do for the next 30 days? Something else I sort of unpacked in this report. Some interesting answers I got were on the topic of F&B dynamic pricing. So I know you guys are doing a lot Billy on like profit analytics and labor costs and food costs in the F&B department. Are you exploring at all this notion of, like, different times a day charge you know different food, different types of food. You know you're not gonna have to start from meals or the craziest one I've heard is you know if you get a beer from the bar it costs a certain amount, but if you have a server bring it to you out on the patio it's more expensive. Have you guys experimented at all with some of that, taking some of that dynamic pricing outwards?

Billy: 24:48

A little bit. Yes, one of the things that we've done and again it's a little unique to us because we have the membership component. So you know we're always there's always that constant balance also of making sure our members feel the love, because you know we hear, oh, the members think that we're giving preferential to the hotel guest and then hotel guests that learn about our membership. Oh well, you give preferential treatment to your members because they're members and you know there's always trying to strike that balance. We've done some things we've done for our membership and you know, mainly to give them value, value add to the membership, some member pricing on, you know, certain like, almost like happy hour, so to speak. But some of our outlets we will have, you know, member Monday And so if you go in there, you know you might get your member discount plus an additional X amount, you know, during certain times of the day. And again, they're using some of the data to see where we're the slowest in our outlet and let's drive some more business there and then give value to our members as well by giving them, you know, here's a bigger discount for you if you come between four and six at this particular outlet or this particular bar, we'll give you an additional discount to your normal membership discount. So we've done a little bit of that and that's been very successful. You know, not only driving more business to a time when we were slower in an outlet, but again making our members feel very valued and giving them something that you know they feel is special and unique for them. So to a degree we've done that. The pricing of the beers I think, actually I think we might do that. I think if we serve it to you on the beach, i think we do charge you a little more than if you buy it at our bar. I have to go back and check on that, but I think we've, actually we do that.

Jason: 26:27

You're on the cutting edge. You guys are on the cutting edge.

Josiah: 26:30

I love it, i love it. Is there anything else that we did not talk about on this topic that we should?

Jason: 26:36

I guess one more interesting thing that sort of came as I was interviewing a lot of people about this topic is the idea of per available room right. A lot of times you see RevPAR, trevpar, ebitda per available room And it's interesting when you start to think about guests who are coming to your property not just to stay right. Maybe they're coming to dine and you're dining out, maybe they're coming to golf, like we've talked about, and they're not staying overnight. That per available room metric then gets a little tricky right And you have to start thinking about other ways to measure it right. And look at your and I'm sure Billy does this as well, but looking at your ancillary outlets, not from a tying them into a room's revenue standpoint, but just seeing how they act independently. And I think that's something hotels are getting smarter about and have more data to analyze today.

Josiah: 27:29

Yeah, that's fascinating. I love it. Is there anything else, billy, that you wanted to share?

Billy: 27:35

I mean I take a lot of pride in the business intelligence tool that we use Gives me the ability to basically be very creative in the reporting, and that's kind of what really sparked my interest back. I was talking about when I started the revenue management. Part of my career here at Sea Island was building reports, really digging into the data. So I'm constantly trying to find a new way to look at something. Is there a better way to look at it? Is there a different way to look at it that can help? That's one thing we really try. You can have lots and lots of reports, but I don't want to build reports just to build reports. We want them to be something that are a useful tool that people can actually make something out of. So one thing we're very excited about here with my team, i have a very small revenue management team, but we are kind of embarking on tying into Power BI and using that as more of a visual representation of our reporting, because everything we do now is in spreadsheet form. You know some graphs and things like that obviously tables. But Power BI can open up a whole another world of again making it easy for people to digest the data and making it very interactive, because with the Power BI we can link it to our data warehouse So people can then change the view they're looking at on the fly. So it's not just a static report on a sheet. You know, in a spreadsheet They can actually change and say, well, what does last month look like? What did last year of the same month look like? They can, you know, as we build out those filters and toggles, that's a real exciting thing for us that we're looking to do. We've met some colleagues that have gone almost completely to Power BI for all their reporting. I don't know that we'll ever go there because we still have some people that love their spreadsheets and will probably have a mixture of both. But that's an exciting thing that we're really looking to launch here the second half of this year.