How Furaveri Maldives Leveraged OTA Insight’s BI and Rate Intelligence Tools to Get Ahead of the Competition

REVENUE MANAGEMENT

Furaveri Maldives is set on a secluded island amidst the Indian Ocean’s sparkling blue waters. The resort offers guests 168 villas and residences spread across 23 hectares of lush tropical landscapes. Apart from relaxing on the white sand beaches, travellers can take advantage of the hotel’s broad variety of outdoor activities and wellness-related services. Ashfaq Ashique, Revenue and Distribution Manager at Furaveri Maldives recently sat down with us for a chat. He shared how he and his team have been leveraging OTA Insight’s suite of business and market intelligence tools to get ahead of the competition and skyrocket their direct bookings.

Why it matters: “It gives you a huge advantage over your competition and allows you to get and stay ahead of them. That’s true everywhere but especially if your compset is slow to adopt new technology”

If you don’t invest in the right tech tools, you lose a lot of time gathering and organising data. But you can’t afford that if you want to win business in a competitive environment.

Top 3 Core Objectives: Leveraging OTA Insight’s suite of business and rate intelligence tools to get ahead of the competition and skyrocket direct bookings.

Accessing data: Before we implemented OTA Insight’s platform, it was hard to access the data we needed when we needed it. Manual research, rate shopping and data collection were only part of the challenge.
Aligning information: It was also difficult to align the information and use it to discover the market trends and make accurate demand predictions. The situation was similar in regards to internal data. Running reports, extracting information and organising it in an easy-to-read format was extremely time-consuming.
Reducing rate disparity: Rate disparity cases used to make it difficult to increase our direct bookings as we frequently lost business to channels that were undercutting us.

Innovators Mentioned

Furaveri Maldives

Lighthouse

Ashfaq Ashique

Revenue and Distribution Manager at Furaveri Maldives

Furaveri Maldives

"OTA Insight’s tools have transformed the way I work. They’re like a 24/7 buffet where I can get all the live data I need, any time of the day. I start with a look at Market Insight to see who will be travelling in the next 90 days. This window is perfect for us since it matches our current booking lead time. Next, I check Revenue Insight to see if I already have bookings for markets with emerging demand. Depending on my on-the-books business, I adjust my pricing and cancellation policies to optimise my positioning. Here, I use compset data from Rate Insight."

Ashfaq Ashique

Revenue and Distribution Manager at Furaveri Maldives

👍 Revenue and Distribution Manager at Furaveri Maldives Ashfaq Ashique said that OTA Insight’s tools have transformed the way I work. They're like a 24/7 buffet where I can get all the live data I need:

"OTA Insight’s tools have transformed the way I work. They’re like a 24/7 buffet where I can get all the live data I need, any time of the day. I start with a look at Market Insight to see who will be travelling in the next 90 days. This window is perfect for us since it matches our current booking lead time. Next, I check Revenue Insight to see if I already have bookings for markets with emerging demand. Depending on my on-the-books business, I adjust my pricing and cancellation policies to optimise my positioning. Here, I use compset data from Rate Insight."

⚖️ The selection process: During their research process, Ashfaq Ashique evaluated Lighthouse's product differentiators, customer support, and holistic value as a strategic partner and ultimately decided that Lighthouse was the best fit solution:

Revenue and Distribution Manager at Furaveri Maldives Ashfaq Ashique said, about their decision: "Rate Insight has helped us cut down on rate disparity cases and thus increase direct bookings by around 215%."

📈 The results: We have been able to get ahead of the competition and boost our direct bookings.

Being able to see when and where our bookings will be coming from helps us allocate our resources to the most promising markets. That has considerably increased our ROI on ad spend and sales initiatives. Especially during the pandemic that was helpful as our limited resources went a longer way.
OTA Insight’s customer service is outstanding. I’ve never seen anything like it. Whenever I have questions about one of the modules, their functions or the data, they respond immediately. Afterwards, they check if their reply was satisfactory and offer extra support and information if needed. I also appreciate the follow-up. In case they weren’t able to provide a full answer or solution right away, someone always gets back to me with what I need. This has helped me make the most of OTA Insight’s tools and it sets them apart from other tech providers.
Rate Insight has been a game changer in spotting rate disparity issues. It reveals which OTAs are undercutting us, and we can correct the situation immediately. That has led to a 215% increase in direct bookings because now our website consistently offers the best deal.