The Rowan Tree Country Hotel, a charming 11-bedroom hotel in Aviemore right in the heart of the Cairngorms National Park in the Scottish Highlands, has been a freetobook customer for over five years. The family-run hotel offers a variety of room types, alongside a 60-seat restaurant popular for special meals.
For Tamasina, the hotel’s owner and a seasoned hospitality professional, running a relatively seasonal property brought unique challenges. Balancing occupancy and revenue, especially during quiet winter months, was a problem Tamasina wanted to crack. In 2022, she decided to implement dynamic pricing through RoomPriceGenie, integrated seamlessly with freetobook, to stay competitive and improve revenue year-round.
“Having worked in dynamic pricing for airlines and hotels, I knew its value,” Tamasina explains. “But when you’re busy running a hotel, it’s easy to get stuck in the day-to-day and miss opportunities for improvement. Dynamic pricing is a way to adapt to demand – in summer, people are happy to pay more; in winter, they’re likely not. It’s supply and demand in action.”
For Rowan Tree, the benefits were clear. With summer occupancy peeking at 99% but dipping in winter to 45%, dynamic pricing provided the flexibility to manage fluctuations effectively and increase revenue, no matter the season.
The integration process with RoomPriceGenie was smooth and intuitive. “The demo was excellent, and the system itself is very straightforward to use,” Tamasina noted. “What stood out was how easy it was to tweak rates across all room types for specific days. Unlike manually adjusting rates, RoomPriceGenie lets me adjust quickly and efficiently, saving me time.”
Tamasina praised the support from RoomPriceGenie’s team: “Natalie has been incredibly helpful. I prefer email support because I can refer to it, and she always responds within a day.”
“In our first year, we saw a 20-25% uplift in summer revenue while achieving 99% occupancy in July, August, and September 2023. The team’s suggestions were spot-on, but I also liked having the flexibility to tweak the pricing boundaries myself. It’s a great balance of automation and control.”
In 2024, Rowan Tree experienced a slight dip in summer occupancy (80-85%), reflecting broader economic challenges. Yet Rowan Tree still achieved a 10% revenue increase. “A drop in occupancy but a rise in revenue shows the system works. If occupancy and revenue had both dropped, I’d be worried,” Tamasina shared.
While dynamic pricing helped maintain some winter bookings, the system’s tendency to lower rates led Tamasina to experiment. “This winter, I’ve switched it off to see how static rates perform. The feature’s flexibility allows us to adapt as we learn.”
Tamasina encourages fellow property owners to consider dynamic pricing, offering these tips:
For Rowan Tree, dynamic pricing has transformed how they manage revenue and occupancy. “It’s not just about increasing rates – it’s about finding the sweet spot between revenue and volume,” Tamasina sums up. For small properties like Rowan Tree, the ability to enhance pricing in real time, without any manual effort, while maintaining control is invaluable.
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