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It seems obvious that a national educators’ convention, a heavy machinery trade show and a downtown music festival all have different impacts on hotel performance in the core of the city. Just as obvious is the notion that these three types of events have different impacts on hotels removed from the core and connected to other areas and attractions of a city. But how does a CVB or agency quantify those differences and communicate them to a diverse audience? A Compression Analysis from RRC Associates, an STR company, can identify and quantify these differences, help a destination understand how much business must be booked in hotels in the core before a tipping point is reached and how business starts to drive up occupancies or RevPAR in different pockets of a city. Because RRC Associates is a part of the STR family of companies, a compression analysis is built on STR’s unique, geographically based data generally unavailable elsewhere.
Defining your questions
Understanding the different patterns of hotel performance starts by asking the right questions. Are you interested in understanding how and when hotels five miles from the city center benefit from business booked downtown? Do you need to be able to show midscale hotels how their performance differs from upper-tier hotels when the convention center is full? Have you gotten questions from your sales team about whether three large groups are as beneficial to your city as one city-wide group? The first step to quantifying the differences in hotel performance across your city is to think about the most important questions to your team and your constituents.
Accurate data
To achieve accurate and objective answers to your questions, a Compression Analysis using STR data at the property level can serve as the guide. When overlaid with an agency’s or CVB’s booking and events data, a Compression Analysis becomes a powerful analytical tool. For an agency or CVB with a keen interest in understanding and promoting events in a community, it is therefore essential to maintain accurate and accessible databases. While STR data makes up a large portion of a Compression Analysis, there is no substitute for accurate and detailed events and bookings data from an agency or CVB. If you don’t already track this data and analyze it regularly, it can be the best way to start gaining a grasp on how to be strategic in your marketing efforts. Additionally, you don’t want to be caught in a situation where you find yourself saying, “We have good data, we just can’t get it in a useable form.” Any investments you make internally on your database architecture and accuracy will greatly enhance a Compression Analysis.
Communicating with constituents
If you are responsible for attracting groups, transient business or events to a destination, it is imperative to be able to effectively communicate the resultant impacts (and their differences) to your core constituencies. Compression Analysis provides third-party objectivity and results in a compelling and clear presentation form so that you can provide a complete and concise description of how events impact your city. A Compression Analysis can be an essential tool for addressing the concerns of skeptics with accurate and actionable findings.
Summary
A Compression Analysis starts with individual property-level data as the guide to understanding how different events, group types and CVB booking patterns impact hotel performance across a city. Because RRC Associates is part of the STR family of companies we have unique access to data at a level that is generally not available elsewhere. Whether a destination needs to prove the worth of its efforts to the community or understand if three 1,000 peak room night events have the same spill-over impact as one 3,000 peak room night event, a Compression Analysis is an objective third-party tool designed to understand and communicate the notion that events and groups differ in their impacts across a city in important ways.
Contact
Brittany Baldwin
Brittany@str.com
(615) 824-8664
