Wheelhouse launches Pro platform
John Deroulet, revenue manager at Black Swan and Wheelhouse customer, said: “Given Black Swan’s unique proposition of operating premier travel apartments in the top five per cent of urban markets, there is an ever growing need for better revenue management platforms. We have tried out many different systems and Wheelhouse Pro has been outstanding in combining effective high level portfolio management with the granularity required to establish successful pricing and revenue generation strategies at the individual unit level.”
“Backed by a hungry and innovative team we are excited to continue to grow our portfolio alongside their platform,” he added.
ShortTermRentalz spoke to Kitchell on the launch of Wheelhouse Pro:
- How do you expect Wheelhouse Pro to help portfolio operators maximise their revenues while navigating the uncertainty of the market?
Wheelhouse is poised to help operators navigate these uncertain times by empowering professionals and portfolios with relevant and timely data, so each operator can best maximise revenue during these very unique market conditions.
Wheelhouse Pro has numerous new products and features associated with it – and many of them are designed to amplify the performance of Wheelhouse’s core strength – a dynamic pricing engine that increased our average listing’s revenue by more than 22 per cent in 2020.
The pricing engine’s particular strength is what we call a “reactive demand model”, which is particularly good at analysing and interpreting upcoming booking patterns in each unique market. That reactive demand model will prove to be especially crucial in a year when historical data is not going to provide effective guidance.
Having spent six years on that model, and now enabling people to see much more of the data that drives our model, we are confident that we are extremely well-positioned to help operators outperform the market in 2021.
- Why have you decided to launch the Wheelhouse Pro platform at this particular moment in time?
First, in March of 2020, we took a look at the market and felt that large property managers were still under-served from a pricing perspective. As of December, we were ready to fully test and optimise the performance of a system that felt meaningfully more robust, different, and valuable.
When partnering with a dynamic pricing and automated revenue management company, you should trust that company as much as you trust your bank. Especially with Wheelhouse Pro going live, we are in the business of shipping software, but also stability.
- What are your plans to roll out and expand the Pro platform as we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic?
Wheelhouse Pro is live today, on six continents, 60+ countries, 800+ markets, and 10,000s of towns. However, we will continue to amplify the Wheelhouse Pro offering in three meaningful ways in the next three months.
First, as of last week, we launched our next new addition to the Wheelhouse platform – our benchmarking / CompSet tool – to 50 beta customers. We are weeks away from sharing that tool with everyone.
Second, we are poised to dramatically increase the number of software integrations around Wheelhouse. With our APIs live and new partnerships developed, we expect to make Wheelhouse available “everywhere” in short order.
Third, we are going to be launching one additional “insights” tool in Q1, as well. In short, we are taking the data science tools that we have developed for years, and making them accessible to everyone. We believe that tool will provide the level of transparency that the operators in our space deserve.
- How important are dynamic pricing and informative market reports in enhancing the professionalisation of the short-term rental sector to replicate hotel-like standards?
First, I don’t hear that many travellers asking for a “return to hotel standards”. On the contrary, as Covid stress-tested the hospitality space, I think it illustrated how individual operators in the short-term rental space have always done an excellent job of both [a] accommodating the needs of their guests, and [b] adjusting rapidly to changing market conditions.
Second, from a software perspective, I like to say that 2021 will be the year that hotels truly start leaning into the technology that has been developed in the short-term rental ecosystem. The unique nature of short-term rentals [from distributed / remote operations, to merchandising and pricing this multi-faceted supply] has forced the software we build to be well-suited for what looks like the next generation of hospitality.
I believe dynamic pricing, specifically Wheelhouse Pro, will enable more professional operators to scale faster, post-Covid. However, I also believe that to be true of numerous other softwares that have been developed to power operations, insurance, communications, and more.
