Affixify Partner Industry Expert Series: Edition One | The Hotelier's RMS Playbook

Affixify is thrilled to collaborate with our incredible partners to shine a light on what’s possible with today’s revenue management tools. When used correctly, an RMS doesn’t just summarize what happened last week, it anticipates demand, surfaces pricing opportunities before competitors can act, and turns data into real revenue. We’re endlessly grateful to the partners who showed up for this series and shared their expertise so generously. This is exactly the kind of collaboration that moves the industry forward.

What's Inside

We asked each partner for their best, most actionable advice. What follows is a distillation of their expertise, the things they wish every hotelier knew.

Insights from Alan Young, VP of Product Strategy, Infor RMS

Alan Young has spent years helping hotel teams extract real value from revenue management technology at Infor Hospitality. His core message: an RMS is a forward-looking tool, and the hotels that treat it as one consistently outperform those that don’t. Here’s his advice for getting the most out of the system.

1. Treat RMS as a forecast, not a report.

RMS is designed to look forward. Every number reflects the system's current view of future demand, pickup, and pricing pressure based on available data. Its real value is in what it signals about what is coming next, especially periods that are not getting attention yet.

2. Focus on trends, not single data points.

One day of pickup or a single price change rarely means much on its own. What matters is the pattern over time. Look for sustained movement in a segment, consistent compression on certain dates, or gradual shifts in booking window. RMS is strongest when it helps you spot and act on these trends early.

3. Data quality directly impacts forecast quality.

Outdated segmentation, misaligned rate codes, or uncleared group blocks all reduce accuracy. RMS output is only as good as the inputs behind it. Regular hygiene reviews of segmentation, rate structures, and group data are one of the highest-impact ways to improve performance.

4. Optimize for speed in pricing decisions.

RMS is built to reduce the time between signal and action. If you are exporting data, rebuilding it elsewhere, and debating it in recurring meetings, you are adding delay back into the process. Use the system workflows for daily decisions, and reserve discussions for higher-level strategy like positioning or group ceilings.

5. Focus on integration.

RMS creates the most value when it is connected to the broader operating stack. That means surfacing insights in the right place, pushing decisions into the right systems, and making it easier for teams to act quickly. The strongest setups are the ones where RMS is embedded in the workflow, not treated as a separate tool.

“RMS creates real value when teams use it to anticipate what’s coming, act on emerging patterns instead of isolated data, maintain clean inputs, move quickly on pricing signals, and embed it directly into everyday workflows.”

— Alan Young, VP Product Strategy, Infor Hospitality

Insights from Mike Kantor, Commercial Director, North America, RoomPriceGenie

Mike Kantor leads commercial growth across North America for RoomPriceGenie, a platform built to make revenue management accessible and effective for hotels of all sizes. For Mike, the biggest unlock isn’t a feature — it’s a mindset shift. Hotels that stop looking backward and start looking forward are the ones that see results.

1. Let your RMS look forward, not backward.

Your RMS isn't a reporting tool — it's a forecasting engine built to help you stay ahead of demand. Instead of reviewing what already happened, use it to shape smarter decisions for the next 30, 60, and 90 days. The future is where the revenue is!

2. Trust the recommendation, then understand why.

When RoomPriceGenie suggests a rate change, take a moment to understand what's driving it — whether it's pickup pace, competitor rates, or local demand signals. The more familiar you get with the logic behind the numbers, the more confident and empowered your pricing decisions become.

3. Set it up right and let it do the heavy lifting.

A well-configured RMS is one of the hardest-working members of your team. Make sure your min/max rates, room types, and restrictions are set up correctly, and then let it run. A properly set-up system will consistently find revenue that manual pricing misses.

4. Watch your pickup rate, not just your occupancy.

Occupancy tells you where you've been. Pickup rate tells you where you're heading. If bookings are coming in faster than usual for a future date, that's your cue to move rates up — before you fill up at prices that are too low. It's one of the most valuable signals your RMS gives you.

5. Don't compete on price — compete on value.

Your RMS will show you what the market is doing. The best hoteliers use that insight to price with confidence and position their property smartly — not to race to the bottom. Know your worth, and let the data back you up.

“The biggest shift we see in hoteliers who get great results is pretty simple — they stop looking backwards and start looking forward. Your RMS is built to help you act on what’s coming, not explain what already happened. That mindset change makes all the difference.”

— Mike Kantor, Commercial Director North America, RoomPriceGenie

Insights from Mateusz Sznir, Founder & CEO, Pricepoint

Mateusz Sznir founded Pricepoint with a clear conviction: the hospitality industry’s real problem isn’t a lack of data — it’s a lack of execution speed. Revenue management, in his view, is fundamentally about decision-making, not reporting. A hotel at 85% occupancy can still be massively underpriced; a hotel at 60% can be perfectly positioned. Context and speed matter more than any single metric. His tips reflect where the RMS category is heading — and what forward-thinking hotels should be doing now.

1. The RMS category is being disrupted by AI.

Most RMS platforms were designed for a world where revenue managers manually reviewed recommendations. AI changes that. Hotels no longer need software that produces more reports. They need systems that continuously analyze demand and act on it.

2. Autonomous Revenue Management is becoming real.

The future isn't recommendation engines — it's autonomous pricing. Systems that detect changes in demand, calculate the optimal rate, and execute pricing decisions automatically, without waiting for human intervention.

3. Real-time pricing will replace scheduled pricing.

Updating rates once a day made sense fifteen years ago. Today's market moves too quickly. Hotels that react in real time will increasingly outperform hotels that price on fixed schedules.

4. Small hotels will gain enterprise capabilities.

Historically, sophisticated revenue management was reserved for large chains with dedicated teams. AI is removing that barrier. Independent hotels, hostels, and small groups can now access pricing capabilities that were previously available only to major brands.

5. The winners will execute faster than everyone else.

The hospitality industry often talks about data. The next decade will be about execution. Every hotel has access to more data than ever before. The question is no longer who has the most information — it's who can turn information into revenue the fastest.

“Every hotel has access to more data than ever before. The question is no longer who has the most information — it’s who can turn information into revenue the fastest. That’s where the industry is heading. And that’s where we believe the traditional RMS category starts to evolve into something entirely different: an Autonomous Revenue Engine.”

— Mateusz Sznir, Founder & CEO, Pricepoint

Insights from Nicole Adair, Director of Product - Core Applications & Growth, FLYR Hospitality

Nicole Adair leads product for core applications and growth at FLYR Hospitality, a platform built around a clear conviction: the real differentiator in revenue management isn't the interface,  it's the science underneath it. FLYR's approach centers on autonomous pricing that genuinely explains itself and a model designed to learn from the revenue manager, not work around them.

1. If you're reviewing every pricing decision, something is wrong.

A modern RMS prices every room type, every future date, continuously — pushing rates automatically as demand signals shift. If your team is spending significant time reviewing and approving routine pricing moves, you're not getting what you paid for. The system should be handling that. Your team's attention belongs on strategy, exceptions, and the decisions that actually require human judgment. Autonomous revenue management isn't about removing control. It's about making routine oversight unnecessary.

2. If your system can explain its pricing, find out where that explanation actually comes from.

Most RMS platforms surface explanations as a layer on top of the engine — assembling a plausible narrative after the fact. That's not the same as exposing why the engine priced what it priced. FLYR Hospitality Optimize surfaces the actual considerations of the pricing engine itself: the demand signals, the reasoning, the engine output — translated into language revenue managers can work with. The explanation isn't post-hoc analysis bolted on from a separate source. It's the engine making its logic visible.

3. Work with the system so it learns from you.

The FLYR Hospitality engine interprets revenue manager inputs as signals of strategic intent, not fixed constraints to override in the next cycle. When you communicate something — a market event, a segment shift, a strategic priority — the engine uses that as context that influences pricing exploration. You are not fighting it or accommodating it. You are keeping yourself in the role of strategist, and the system is translating that strategy into pricing decisions at a speed and scale no team could match manually.

4. Be careful with chat interface recommendations.

A number of platforms now surface AI chat interfaces that can answer questions and summarize data. These can be useful for exploration — but a conversational interface is not a revenue management model, and the two should not be confused. What a general-purpose language model generates is a response based on training data, not output derived from a rigorously trained model built on hospitality demand patterns and validated against real pricing outcomes.

5. The quality of the science underneath matters more as AI moves faster.

As intelligent agents become more capable of acting across systems, solving for connectivity raises the stakes on something more fundamental: the quality of the systems being connected. The more fluidly agents can act, the more consequential their outputs become. It has never been easier to build something that looks intelligent — and that makes it easier to mistake a convincing interface for a rigorous one. The underlying data science and deep learning is what separates a system that performs from one that just appears to.

“It has never been easier to build something that looks intelligent. That's not a criticism — it's a structural reality. The shiny object problem isn't going away. If anything, the pace of that makes it harder to ask the right question: what is this actually built on? You can't vibe code your way into it and you can't acquire your way into it. A rigorously trained, continuously learning model embedded across your platform is built over time. That kind of intelligence compounds.”

— Nicole Adair, Director of Product — Core Applications & Growth, FLYR Hospitality

What the Experts Agree On

Across all four partners, a few themes came up again and again. Here's what every hotelier should take away.

Your RMS is a forecasting tool,  not a reporting tool.

All three experts said it in different ways, but the message was the same: stop looking backward. The real power of an RMS is in what it tells you about what's coming next, not what already happened.

Speed of execution is the real competitive edge.

The gap between seeing an opportunity and acting on it is where revenue is won or lost. Whether it's moving rates on a fast-filling date or reacting to a competitor shift, the hotels that move quickly are the ones that capture the upside.

Your system is only as good as what surrounds it.

Clean data, thoughtful configuration, and seamless integration with your broader tech stack aren't nice-to-haves, they're the foundation. Every partner emphasized that the RMS performs best when it's embedded in the workflow, not siloed from it.

Turns out, the secret to better revenue management isn't a secret at all but the people and tools working together behind the scenes. At Affixify, connecting hoteliers and consultants with partners who actually move the needle is kind of our whole thing, and we couldn't be more excited about what's ahead. Stay tuned for the next edition of the Affixify Partner Industry Expert Series.