How Intent Driven Search Can Support Hotel Revenue Management

Strategies for revenue management in hotels take many different forms. Perhaps your organization needs to secure more repeat bookings, or maybe you’re working on dynamic pricing and new guest satisfaction initiatives.

Regardless of which metrics you’ve chosen to improve in the past, new technologies are making their way into the industry—and that means hotels have the opportunity to use them to optimize revenue management.

If you’re wondering which tools to adopt and where to direct your focus to optimize hotel revenue, it’s important to keep in mind a defining tenet of success in hospitality: the quality of the guest experience.

It’s an important factor that shouldn’t be overlooked, and for good reason: According to a study by Bain & Company, acquiring a new guest can cost 25–95% more than retaining an existing one—a reminder that delivering positive experiences and earning repeat bookings are essential to profitability.

As your organization decides where to dedicate your time and effort to improve revenue management, there are a few key circumstances to keep in mind. At the end of the day, hotels face a range of challenges when it comes to revenue management. There can be unpredictable seasonality and limitations to the traditional search engines that help your guests book the best stays for their trips.

Naturally, some of these elements can be difficult to control. To make the most of your resources, focus strategically on more easily influenced factors like guest satisfaction. In this post, we'll cover how to use Mobi.AI’s AI-powered search tool, Mobi Intent Driven Search™, to offer better guest experiences from start to finish.

Common Challenges in Hotel Revenue Management

To make improvements in revenue management, it’s important to take stock of the challenges that might be affecting your organization. Here are some of the obstacles that can make hotel revenue management more complex:

• Seasonality: Demand often fluctuates throughout the year. In response, hotels might need to adopt a flexible approach to pricing, inventory, and promotion to modulate occupancy rates and optimize revenue year-round.
• Last-Minute Travel Changes: It might seem inevitable that guests will make unexpected changes or cancellations at the last possible moment. These can disrupt your revenue predictions and make it difficult to fill rooms. While it’s true that some cases are unavoidable, you can still reduce cancellation rates by encouraging guests to book directly with your hotels.
• Low Repeat Booking Rates: When guest satisfaction is low, so are repeat bookings. The result is weakened long-term revenue stability. As travelers expect more personalized and experience-driven stays, it can be more challenging to retain guests without renewing efforts to match their preferences.
• High Rates of Indirect Bookings: When guests book with your hotel through third-party sites, your risk of cancellation increases and the revenue you bring in from the booking drops. On their own, these effects might seem minor or not worth addressing in favor of other big-ticket items. Combined, however, they become a substantial factor that eats away at your hotel revenue.

Mobi Intent Driven Search (IDS) is designed to take on some of these issues by aligning guest goals and expectations with hotel offerings. When guests can find the perfect stay right on your website, they’re more likely to book directly, visit your site again, and follow through on trip plans.

The Role of Intent Driven Search in Revenue Management

IDS offers a unique, AI-powered approach to understanding guest preferences. It recommends the most suitable options from a hotel’s portfolio to help you provide the best possible guest experience—beginning with their research and planning process.

Unlike traditional hotel search engines, Mobi IDS centers guests’ ideal experiences instead of fixed dates and locations. The advantage is that IDS helps hotels engage guests with personalized suggestions that help them fulfill their travel goals.

When guests search for a "romantic beach getaway" or "family-friendly vacation near hiking trails," IDS parses their natural language inputs to identify the underlying travel goals. Mobi then performs a search across a comprehensive data set—encompassing millions of points of interest around dining options, activities, local wildlife, climate, and more—from over 60 sources.

This data is continually updated with real-time information to enable IDS to match guests with properties that align precisely with their preferences. Personalized results simplify planning and decision-making for travelers, ultimately facilitating positive travel experiences and reducing third-party commission fees by driving direct bookings.

Benefits of AI-Supported Revenue Management

1. Staying Ahead of Hotel Industry Trends

As travel trends continue to change, ongoing optimization is one of the only ways to keep up. Hotels now contend with trends like growing interest in personalized, experience-driven stays and sustainable travel.

New AI-driven technology such as IDS grants hotels an opening to use AI to meet these demands. At its core, it analyzes travel preferences and provides recommendations based on real-time data around local events, weather, and activity options. For hotels looking to improve revenue management, more detailed information about guests and the ability to offer personalized recommendations could transform retention strategies.

2. Inspiring Guests with Loyalty-Building Experiences

Guests today look for convenient experiences. Mobi’s AI-driven recommendations help hotels offer both travel planning convenience and memorable stays by suggesting the most relevant activities and amenities. Unique, tailored experiences differentiate your hotels in a competitive market and can support revenue growth from loyal guests who return to your brand time after time.

With greater guest satisfaction as a result of AI adoption, you’ll see perks like more direct bookings, fewer cancellations, and maximized occupancy—all of which contribute to better revenue management.

3. Simplifying the Booking Journey

Hotels face many challenges as they strive to provide a consistent, high-quality experience. Fortunately, IDS makes a part of the process simple: When guests are always presented with choices that precisely match their preferences, they’re more likely to complete bookings directly with the hotel.

Consider a guest searching for “pet-friendly hotels near the beach.” As of now, a search like is not even possible directly on most hotel websites, which means they’ll be faced with a surplus of options to sort through, and it will take them longer to get to your website, if they get there at all.

IDS guarantees tailored options and shows guests exactly where they can find both pet-friendly amenities and beachfront access. This precision reduces the number of steps involved in booking, creating a smoother experience that has the potential to lead to higher booking completion rates.