IDeaS targets China, Japan

"Market segment of one" is the new mantra

Post-acquisition by SAS, IDeaS, maker of revenue management software for hospitality, now has longer arms and legs and deeper pockets and will focus on Japan and China for its expansion this year, said Grahame Tate, Managing Director Asia Pacific.

Although he knows those two markets are among the toughest to crack, he is confident that with SAS products integrated into hospitality and with SAS presence in those two markets, he will be able to make headway. "Those are the two biggest markets left. After that it's Korea," he said.

SAS bought IDeaS in August 2008 in a move which analysts said made sense. It allowed it to expand to the hospitality vertical and, according to one analyst, "SAS primarily buys only small companies with specific, targeted solutions that they can combine with other SAS products."

For China, Tate said it would focus on the domestic market "where revenue management is not there yet".

"There's a SAS University in China and offices in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou and we are leveraging off that."

In Japan, Tate said the revenue management culture was "very different".

"I think to be more successful in revenue management there, we need to take a better pricing focus rather than the traditional revenue management restriction focus."

He is cautiously optimistic about the year ahead. "Hotels need to be more aggressive in selling this year. Last year was a shock for hotel groups and now they have to get back to basics - strong revenue management with strong sales and a unified approach between sales and revenue management."

He added, "Hotels should prepare for a steady rebound and have processes in place so that when the demand picks up, they can manage the demand and not be overwhelmed by it."

He observed though that good revenue managers were hard to find.

He also said this was the year of using web analytics to target a market segment of one. "It was eye-opening for me when I saw what the SAS guys could do with their analytics. What we really need to do is train "nerds" - who understand how these things work - in the soft skills so they can articulate and present these tools in a way people can easily understand."