Vlad: For those who have no idea about you or the company, can you introduce who you are, what you do, and why people should choose you?
Rahul: Hello, everyone. My name is Rahul. I take care of the apartments business at Suha Hospitality. We're an extended-stay apartment operator serving family-oriented people who want apartments with the luxury element of hotels. So we have traditional apartments, managed end to end through the tech stack, that operate the same as hotels - hotel apartments. We take care of that business in the Dubai market.
Vlad: What is something you understand about revenue management for extended-stay apartments that most Dubai hotel operators get wrong?
Rahul: When it comes to hotel apartments, it's a value-driven proposition rather than purely revenue-generating. Maximising ADR is everyone's focus in the hotel industry, but in the apartment business we're driven by the value people see on an extended stay - monthly, half-yearly, yearly bookings. Unlike a one-, two-, or three-night hotel stay, where people aren't much bothered about the value proposition, here we have to be very careful about what we offer: the type of appliances, the setup. People take a call based on that, because they're coming with their families and everyone wants to extend their stay based on the value proposition within that price range. That's very critical here.
Vlad: How do you see the market over the next three to six months, with everything happening on the AI and technology side?
Rahul: AI is coming in gradually. In hospitality we've used it for a while, but it was a manual type of AI - the rate proposition to the RMS, which checks the market, the competitiveness, the value we're bringing. Occupancy, ADRs, all of that is already under check. With AI coming in, it won't take instant decisions the way a person does, but it's strong on evaluation through the systems. Today everything is dynamic and online, so all that online data gets forecast, and a person inputs data to make it a result. But that result point - is the person happy or not, how the result is coming - is something we decide, not AI. For instance, the Dubai market suddenly went to an abrupt point in March, April. AI looks at history and forecasts old data. But moving forward, it's not about the old data - it's the comp set. If the comp set isn't willing to drop rates, there's no guest in the market. So there's a manual intervention: AI is working on price intelligence, price sensitivity, competitiveness checks, but the person on the field feels how the decision needs to be taken to safeguard the company first. Those quick decisions AI isn't taking. But in the long run - SEO, channel management, the coding and encryption side - AI is definitely there and will help.
Vlad: A lot of companies compare OTAs like Airbnb and Booking.com with direct bookings. Why do you think pushing direct over OTAs stays so hard, even with a best-price guarantee?
Rahul: I'll be honest - the OTAs have done a very big job. They're ahead of their time. Every company likes that direct cuts your cost of acquisition, and any direct business is good. But how good is your website or sales team at getting direct? Can we fill the inventory 365 days with direct business on our own website? A brand known well in the Indian market may be unknown in the Russian, Chinese, or Sri Lankan markets. OTAs give you a wider distribution - reaching every nook and corner of the world, across languages, user-friendliness, and payment gateways, converting easily in each currency. A standalone property or even a chain can't afford that level of distribution on its own platform. Our own website and direct bookings matter from a loyalty, repeat, and information point of view, but the OTAs are ahead of their times - it's an ongoing comparison. Some players are coming up to the OTAs' level, but it takes due diligence for the long run. And OTAs are good, as long as you keep your commissions in check.
Vlad: Everyone complains about commissions, but they're a good way to acquire guests.
Rahul: It's a good way to convey your brand - all the amenities and appliances - because OTAs are learning too, adding new things to their backends. There are member tiers, level one, two, three, and qualified data on where short bookings come from, the frequent flyers. Every hotelier bids a lot to get that qualified data. So how do you get first-hand qualified data? Not always through the brand website - brand websites change frequently, every three to five years there's a revamp. In hotel management, the operator changes, the look and feel changes, the shell and core changes. If a property deflags and reflags from one brand to another, a lot gets missed in the transition. At least the OTAs are a stable link between the customer and a brand that's standalone or within a country.
Vlad: So it's just another channel - don't rely on a single one. Diversify across OTAs and direct.
Rahul: It's part of the game. We need to diversify and be careful. Saying OTAs are cutting into us so we need to take them down can boomerang - hotels aren't at 100% occupancy every time. Those sitting at 60, 65, 70% need to be careful with that.
Vlad: In my case, when I want to go somewhere I first find a place on Booking - unless I saw a nice place on TikTok, then I'll go to their website directly.
Rahul: That's part of turning the traffic toward the booking engine, and that's part of our cost of acquisition. All the Instagram stories and marketing our team does is to gain traffic and brand exposure - that's a cost too. But in a wider area, it's the OTAs doing wonders, and it's easy for us to pick up. By default, they do a lot of wonder for us.
Vlad: What happens behind the scenes when you set dynamic rates across all your properties heading into peak season in Dubai?
Rahul: The rates keep changing with seasonality, and you'd be surprised by Dubai's in-season versus off-season rates - it's threefold. If a rate is 500 or 550 dirham, you'll see 2,200 or 2,500. In dollars, from around $350-500 up to $1,500-2,000 for those apartments in season. And it happens with a big, sudden jump - when seasonality hits Dubai at the start of winter, or a festivity, or anything that pushes occupancy, the ADR spike comes very suddenly. The beauty of Dubai is that if five properties in a concept are doing well, the sixth will too, by default - whatever the rate strategy, the others pick it up. But we need to be careful, because it can be good business for a few months and low for five months, with two months of shoulder period. That's how dynamic pricing works in the Dubai market.
Vlad: What is one belief about revenue management that most directors in Dubai would disagree with?
Rahul: Everyone goes for the ADR approach - the best ADR for their hotel. But I always say look at the value proposition too. If a person is staying in a seven-star hotel that's in your comp set, are you giving that value proposition? The market is sitting at a thousand dollars, everyone pushes for a thousand dollars, but does your product carry that value? You need to justify it. When seasonality comes, I always ask my operations team to offer the value along with the rate - enhance the product, add more ancillary services into the value proposition. People might agree or not, because they'll think it's heavy on the P&L and burdens the cost structure. But I say take the rates up, no problem - just keep the value proposition in mind as well.
Vlad: Dubai is a very competitive place for hospitality. How much does your strategy get disrupted by seasonality, events, or competitor pricing - and how do you compete against five-star hotels?
Rahul: The distribution platforms are the same, the tactics are the same. What makes the difference is the additional product you offer. A room elsewhere might be 17 to 23 square meters; we have 36 square meters. Our appliances are all Bosch - refrigerator, washing machine, dryer, dishwasher - all plug and play. When a person chooses our apartments, the setup is already there for them, and they choose it very conveniently over a hotel room. As I said, we're an extended stay for family-oriented people, so for those staying more than four, five, six nights we're the first choice - nobody wants outside food for their babies or children for a long time, so they look for somewhere they can cook at home. We provide that luxury element in the apartment, where they come and start living.
Vlad: What is one of the biggest sources of friction your revenue team feels daily that guests never see?
Rahul: Friction around distribution. When the last rooms are available, we close them on some channels or put a stop on them, but somewhere a distribution leakage happens. So we upgrade or downgrade guests accordingly and notify the backend and travel agencies that, due to tech-stack issues, something happened. All of that stays at the backend - guests never come to know. By the time they arrive, we make sure they have the best experience and see happy faces at the front desk. But behind it there's a lot of work: following up with the agency, checking where the voucher arrived from, sharing with the centralised teams which guests are coming and what issue we faced. Any which way, everything gets sorted, and we're happy to welcome them.
Vlad: If you had a magic wand to remove one manual revenue or pricing workflow tomorrow, what would it be?
Rahul: I'd want the budget placed so we achieve it automatically by putting the rate into the system automatically. AI can do that - take your yearly budget, divide it among all the segments and channels, and automate it. But here in Dubai the biggest issue is rate leakage. With single properties, small chains, and local chains, the B2B rates we send always get leaked onto B2C platforms. We always want to control that and hold price parity across all platforms. If the magic wand were there, I'd place it on getting parity quickly.
Vlad: Looking back 10 years, what advice would you give yourself for more clarity to get where you are today?
Rahul: Even today, revenue management is an evolving process - from revenue management to distribution, now toward cost of distribution, and from there toward profitability distribution: which is my most profitable channel to distribute through. It's getting more complex. Ten years back, checking profitability was a very complex exercise - manual files and everything. Now we have software that gives you the bottom line and lets you track it by rooms, segments, countries, and length of stay. This process is moving further toward profitability and how more of it can be generated from where we started. We began with revenue management from a distribution point of view; then channel management made distribution easier. Now people are jumping toward profit-picking - making every channel and every single booking more profitable. With AI coming in, marketing and other costs are going down. Ten years forward, it'll be different again - more on every granular piece of data coming into the system: how I read that data and ensure we get the required level of profit. Budget matters, but it keeps increasing every year - three, five percent - and somewhere it has to stop.
Vlad: The market has evolved so much in the last five years. Maybe in the future it won't even be us in the podcast - it'll be our avatars.
Rahul: Definitely. Ten years back when we started it was a completely different system. Hotels used Opera widely - even as trainees, everyone learned on that Oracle-based setup. But now the newer hotels strong enough to take the call themselves are going for profitable PMSs, ones with a two-way interface that help properties build their profits. Those sitting easy manage the old PMS, but those strong enough to make the calls get their profits booked with the new PMS. A lot of players are coming into that market, so gradually it's evolving.
Vlad: Where can people find more about you and the company, in case they want to book?
Rahul: Just plan a family getaway and we're always there. We're Suha Hospitality, with hotel apartments across Dubai. We have one in the famous Jumeirah Beach Residence near Marina Beach - the Suha JBR Hotel Apartments. We have one near the historic site in Bur Dubai, Suha Mina Rashid, which you can call Suha Bur Dubai. And two hotels near the airport. So we have a mix of clients: more of the CIS market in JBR, Asia-Pacific, Indian, and Pakistani guests in Bur Dubai, and the GCC crowd in the two near the airport. Suha Hospitality is the name.
Vlad: Thank you so much for everything you shared today. I'll put all the links in the description for people to get in touch.
Rahul: Pleasure is all mine.
