How revenue management is changing for independent hotels: Tim Kolman on The Modern Hotelier

On episode 337 of The Modern Hotelier, recorded at the Independent Hotel Show in Miami, host David Millili talked with Tim Kolman, VP of Sales at Ampliphi, about pricing at hotels without a revenue manager. Tim's argument: at most small independents, pricing happens at the end of the day, a few dates at a time, and the idea that revenue management needs a full-time person is left over from systems built 30 years ago. Today's tools can do the watching while the hotelier keeps the decision. Steve Taft also joined the conversation.

Pricing happens after everything else

David opened with the question most revenue management conversations skip: what does pricing look like at a 40-room independent with no revenue manager?

Tim's answer will be familiar to anyone who has run one. "Revenue management is done at the end of the day after they have done check-ins, check-outs, laundry, breakfast, everything else, maintenance, everything else to keep the property running." By then there's time for the two or three dates already known to be busy, and not much else.

The other pattern he sees is set and forget. "They set the price once every month for the next three or four months and then maybe revisit that price once or twice again before that date comes."

Neither habit is careless. Both come from having one person and a full day. The cost shows up on the nights sold between those updates, after demand has moved. Our free Revenue Leak Calculator puts a number on that for your own hotel.

"I don't have the manpower" is a hangover

The first objection David hears from independents is that they can't staff a revenue management system. Tim called it "a bit of a hangover from legacy RMS technology."

His history lesson: early systems grew out of reservations managers turning years of spreadsheets into a forecast, and the forecast drove the price. That kind of system needed someone to feed it and years of history to learn from.

Tim's point is that recent booking behavior now teaches a system faster than old history does. His example: "I increased my rate $10. I expect to pick up three rooms in the next 24 hours, but all of a sudden I picked up five. You can learn from that." Or, as he put it more briefly, "while historical data paints a picture, real-time data then tells the story."

Watch your competitors. Don't follow them.

Ask an independent who their competitors are, Tim said, and the usual answer is that they don't really have any. Ask who they check for pricing, and "they give me a list of five."

He's clear about what that list is for. "I don't even trust competitors to price their hotel rates. I'm not going to trust competitors to price my hotel. But I want to watch what they're doing." A competitor raising rates may simply have a group in the house, which says nothing about the wider market. His rule: "Don't follow your competitor's rates, especially when it's down."

Tim described how a pricer reads competitor moves alongside their own pace and any events in town before deciding how far to move. A $30 rise next door means more when you're also ahead of pace, and more again if a major concert is coming.

How that works in Ampliphi today: the everyday rate suggestion comes from your booking pace and occupancy. Competitor rates sit in a separate view of up to five hotels you choose, and events are a separate module. You see all three and make the call.

Co-pilot first, automation when you choose

Should a hotel with a system let it run, or keep pricing by hand? Tim said it depends on the hotel and the market, and that automation earns its place when nobody is at a desk eight hours a day.

His practical version: "I'm not going to want to look at 365 days every day. Let's automate it for everything outside of 14 days." If your booking window is 14 days, that's where your attention goes, and the system handles the rest.

He rarely sees hotels hand everything over, and he doesn't think they should have to. "Systems are built for the comfort of the user and the property." David summed it up: hoteliers want "a co-pilot, not an autopilot." Tim agreed.

In Ampliphi, that's how it's built. You approve every rate. Auto-publish exists, and it's yours to switch on once you trust the suggestions.

From revenue management to commercial strategy

Tim spent part of the conversation on where he thinks the industry is going. Revenue management began with forecasting unconstrained demand and setting hurdle rates. For a long time, sales and catering, marketing and revenue each ran on their own systems and rarely talked.

He sees that changing as systems connect. His example was an AI assistant answering one question across departments: which groups look likely to wash or cancel in the next month, which past campaigns could fill that gap, and what rate would convert the travelers those campaigns bring in.

For a small independent, Tim argued, this matters more than it does for a brand. A big hotel has a specialist for each function. A one-person operation can't, but with the right tools it can ask the question and act on the answer without waiting on anyone. That, in his view, is how independents compete with branded hotels and sometimes beat them.

Treat this as Tim's view of the direction of travel, not a description of a product you can buy today.

How do you know it worked?

David asked the question owners rarely get a straight answer to: six months in, how do you know it worked, and what would tell you it didn't?

Tim's answer started before the contract. Find out why the owner signed up. Some want RevPAR or RevPAR index. Some want occupancy every night. Some just don't want to price anymore. The strategy decides what success looks like.

He was blunt about the limits. If the comp set in an owner's head includes a hotel that isn't a real competitor, beating it on RevPAR index may not be possible. And pricing can't fix everything. "I can price higher all day long, but at the end of the day, if your reviews don't say that and you're number 15 on TripAdvisor compared to your comp set," the two won't meet.

He also told a story about an owner who wanted to cancel once results came in, reasoning that the confidence was theirs now. Tim asked whether they had time to do the daily analysis the system does. They didn't, and they stayed.

Nobody uses the paper map

David closed with an analogy from his own revenue management days. Ask a room who drove there with a paper map, and nobody raises a hand. Everyone uses navigation, because it takes in traffic, accidents and roadworks.

Tim admitted to printing MapQuest binders for road trips, and added the part that makes the analogy work for hotels: "it's very important to have kind of a human in the loop alongside." He said he hates the word algorithm because it scares people. What helps is someone who understands the hotel's strategy and has run hotels before. As Tim put it, there's nothing more satisfying than helping an owner "overcome that fear of the black box."

Frequently asked questions

What does pricing look like at a small independent hotel without a revenue manager?

On the episode, Tim Kolman described pricing done at the end of the day, after operations, covering only the two or three dates already known to be busy. Many properties also set rates once a month for the next few months and revisit them once or twice before arrival.

Do independent hotels need a revenue manager to use an RMS?

Tim called that belief a hangover from legacy systems that relied on long forecasts and years of history. Current systems learn faster from recent booking behavior, and the hotelier can automate the far-out dates and watch only the dates inside their booking window.

Should hotels follow their competitors' rates?

No. Tim's advice was to watch competitors but never follow them, especially when they drop rates, because a competitor's move may reflect its own group business rather than market demand.

Should hotels let an RMS run fully automatically?

Tim said full automation is rare and shouldn't be required. The common setup is a co-pilot: the system suggests and the hotelier approves, with automation switched on only where they choose.

Source: episode 337 of The Modern Hotelier, hosted by David Millili, recorded at the Independent Hotel Show in Miami. Guests: Tim Kolman and Steve Taft.