Read the interview with Sylvain Caucheteux, Sales and Marketing Director at Belambra. Find out his opinion on Revenue Management and its implementation at Belambra campsites.
You head up the Sales and Marketing department at Belambra. Do you see RM as a sales or marketing issue?
It has to be both! « Pricing » (list prices, trade discounts, net prices) is at the heart of marketing strategy, as it defines the positioning of a tourism brand just as much as its « product » component. Optimising distribution channels is more a commercial matter. Other sub-components of MR, such as Revenue Integrity or the prioritisation of options for business or leisure groups, for example, are at the heart of marketing and sales respectively.
What role does the RM play in your scheme?
A central place. What else? The distinctive feature of tourism brands that produce and distribute their products, such as Belambra (N°1 holiday club in France with 58 destinations), is that they have a centralised Revenue Management Pricing organisation. So there is no local Revenue Manager like in the hotel industry. This in no way detracts from the need to be as close as possible to the reality on the ground in terms of price adjustments and promotional activities on a site-by-site, day-by-day, channel-by-channel basis, but at the same time allows for a certain degree of objectivity and a greater ability to generalise best practice.
What do you think of the trendy subject of bringing MR and CRM together?
This has been made possible by ever more flexible and powerful database management applications, and also by the awareness (long-standing or recent, depending on the brand) among brands that their business development depends on mastering the dialogue with the end customer. However, CRM is a technique that is not widely used by many traditional tourism operators, who have preferred (or have been economically forced) to maintain essentially indirect distribution models. The extremely rapid hegemonic development of the « new » pure player players is rendering these models obsolete.
On what subject do you think you will be able to « create income » in the coming months?
Optimising group management and dynamic pricing are our 2 short- and medium-term priorities for creating value on a like-for-like basis in 2015.
Keywords: Sylvain Caucheteux, Belambra, Pricing, Revenue Management, Revenue Integrity
