Hotel Portfolio Product
The hotel product at Japan Experience is a best-in-class portfolio of 200+ nationwide hotels. Building on market intelligence and strategic relationships, we built a portfolio of handpicked hotels in almost any city in Japan.
Ace Hotel in Kyoto
Sowaka in Kyoto
Kumu in Kanazawa
Hyatt Centric in Kanazawa
My Role
In 2020, I spearheaded the redevelopment of the company’s hotel product offer. Through discovery, segmentation, opportunity prioritization, B2B negotiations, and contracting (all in Japanese), I onboarded 200+ hotel offerings to build an extensive product portfolio.
The Product
Almost anybody can book a hotel almost anywhere in the world with a few clicks. But where are the best hotels for a particular customer? How do you boil 3000 hotels in Tokyo to the top 15? The portfolio we created delivers a product that most OTAs do not have …
What are the right hotels for me and my group?
Through extensive segmentation and market/customer research, we determined how many and what kind of hotels were needed for each destination.
Hotels and all their specifications were then added to an internal platform where Sales, Operations, and other teams were able to access the information.
Strategy
My team used market data and customer interviews to segment categories of hotels into city, accommodation, and star rating. From there, we strategically planned how many hotels, and in what category, we needed for the product portfolio. With the right number of focused partners, we were able to offer a select portfolio of hotels at competitive prices.
MVP
Our minimum viable prototype was an Excel sheet that internal stakeholders, notably sales teams, could use to sell to customers traveling to Japan. Through feedback and iterations, we were able to gather the info and features needed for the final internal platform.
Stakeholder Management
Externally – In year 1 of the project, my team approached, negotiated, and contracted over 200 hotels, using both virtual and face-to-face meetings, all carried out in Japanese.
Internally – the portfolio was almost a zero-to-one product in how the company’s accommodation portfolio and how our company decided what lodgings we would offer, went from sales lead to product lead.
Metrics
- Increased sales commission by 50%, going from an average of 10% commission per booking to 15% overall.
- Increased usability by 30% – The sales team, armed with more data on a select number of hotels, was able to quote customers in less time.
- Streamlined partnerships by 80% – with a more streamlined portfolio we were able to increase sales and improve relationships with B2B suppliers.
Key takeaways
- How to use large amounts of data and resources to discover possible business opportunities.
- How to work with third-party software developers in different countries to make continuous platform progress.
- The importance of cross-functional teamwork and training – depending on the needs of the team I was training, focus on explaining and exploring how and why we were working with different suppliers.
- B2B negotiation skills – finding a win-win scenario, what their pain points were, and how we as a company could help them.
- The success of the portfolio and basic internal platform led the way for investments in digital architecture and planning for the company to build a channel manager to automatically sync with hotel availability and pricing.
Chris Wiggin 