An industry veteran of 16 years, Nick has held senior positions within a variety of leading international hotel brands.
His career started in Tour Operations at Tui Travel as a Yield Executive, later moving onto corporate hotels where he joined Hilton. At Hilton, he spent 6 years in their Revenue Management team, where he was responsible for rolling out IdeaS G3 across the Europe Region.
More recently, Nick was European Regional Director of Revenue for Millennium and Copthorne hotels where he grew the business consistently over his tenure.
Nick was appointed to the Executive Board of budget hotel brand ‘easyHotel’ in Oct 2019 with a remit to reshape their Revenue, Distribution, sales and Commercial strategies.
With 40 open hotels and a strong pipeline, Nick views this opportunity as ‘an exciting prospect to take the business to a whole new level’
Interview with Nick Moffatt, Group Director of Revenue Management at easyHotel
What attracted you to a career in the hospitality industry
I started in Hospitality at the age of 16 as a part time role to support myself through college – I studied engineering, however I somehow never left Hospitality and it’s the people who keep me interested.
How have you seen revenue management change in recent years
I still remember back to the days when you would put prices into a spreadsheet and load them direct into the PMS – Your pricing decisions were largely driven by how much you had left to sell and what the hotel next door was selling at. These days is much more driven by data with AI available and advances in BI we have come such a long way! Technology has allowed Revenue Management to look at far more data points and make many more decisions than thought possible.
Tell us about your role at easyHotel
At easyHotel, I oversee Revenue Management, Corporate Sales, Distribution and Group Sales. I find this quite exciting as I am involved in all areas of the booking process and not just Revenue Management or sales – it is more of an entrepreneurial role where I have to create the demand, distribute it, optimise it and yield it so no two days are alike! I am really fortunate as we have a great team, it’s a small company but we are like a family, it is a fun place to work and everyone digs in!
What are the main key KPIs’ of your department
Today, like most we are looking mainly at RevPAR vs. Market, Budget and prior year. But we are on a journey and the end goal is to be more focussed on driving higher profit margin business. I’m asking my teams ‘Are we selling profitably and are we yielding profitably’ – it is a journey, but we know where we want to end up.
How important is the agency GDS (Global Distribution System) market to your portfolio
This channel is hugely important to us. We recognise that a large number of clients come through the GDS and by opening up this channel, we effectively open our doors to a wider travelling market. We want to diversify our customer mix, but also get to know our customers better. Whether it is a key location for a corporate client or somewhere to stay for a leisure guest, GDS will help us reach those clients and satisfy their lodging needs.
Describe the type of guest your properties’ wish to attract
Having always been present in the leisure market we want to remain so, but we are also looking to attract independently minded corporate clients and groups for whom location and simplicity is key.
Your properties are in some great locations can you let us know what may be next
We are looking at key cities across Europe and we focus on putting our flag in central locations. Our next openings are in the Spanish coastal city of Malaga. We are also progressing on projects in Cardiff, which we plan to open later this year. We are also progressing on projects in Madrid, Paris CDG, Dublin, Cambridge, Oxford, Derby, Zurich, Tel Aviv, Malta and Gozo to name but a few. It is an exciting time for us as we have a strong pipeline of hotels and a variety of destinations!
Do you have any exciting developments at HQ or property level to share with us
We are focussing on improving our booking channels and distribution. For example, we are spending a lot of time developing our brand website to make it even more simple to navigate and even easier to book. We have launched in the group bookings market, GDS and we are developing our corporate offering.
We are experiencing a very challenging future in hospitality with COVID 19. Can you describe the impact and how the future will look for your group
I think the way we shop, eat, travel and spend our leisure time will change dramatically over the short-medium term period. Some of these changes will be lasting and some less so. On a positive note, we are instinctively social beings – we like to travel, meet people face to face, experience new things and attend events. Hotels and travel will definitely come back, when it does hoteliers need to be ready to offer a simple, good quality product at a sensible price.
THANK YOU
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