10 years birthday: how the revenue management software RateBoard redefined the pricing strategies of hotels

Since 2015, RateBoard has been shaping the way hotels organise their pricing strategies. As one of the first and leading revenue management systems for the individual hotel industry, RateBoard has undergone impressive development over the last ten years. From a visionary founding idea, an international game changer has emerged within a decade that has had a lasting impact on the hotel industry.

 

The story of RateBoard began in Innsbruck in 2015. The founders Matthias Trenkwalder and Simon Falkensteiner, both deeply rooted in the South Tyrolean hotel industry, recognised the complex challenges of dynamic pricing in hotels early on. Their goal was clear: to provide hoteliers with an intuitive yet powerful solution that supports them in complex pricing decisions - transparent, practical and time-saving.
 
Even in the initial phase, they focussed on direct communication with the target group: the first prototypes were developed in close cooperation with hoteliers and were constantly refined to meet their practical requirements. The focus was not on technology for its own sake, but on real, tangible relief for everyday hotel life.

Matthias Trenkwalder
Founder & CEO, RateBoard

In 2016, the current CTO Berthold Agreiter joined the team as the first full-time employee and played a key role in driving technical development forward. Within a short space of time, the team grew from two to ten employees and the prototype was turned into market-ready revenue management software. A second office was opened in Vienna and the first 30 hotels chose RateBoard.
 
At the same time, the company received several awards for its innovation: RateBoard was honoured with the Cluster Award Tirol and the title of Young Entrepreneur of the Year from the Tyrolean Chamber of Commerce. The award as the most innovative technology company at the Bolzano Hotel Fair and the Born Global Champion award also emphasize the company's pioneering technological spirit and international growth potential.

 

The challenges were complex: different interfaces to PMS, channel managers and other hotel software solutions had to be created to enable seamless integration. At the same time, it was possible to further develop the product with a focus on ease of use and rapid success.
 
With a seven-digit investment from NextFloor and the AWS Gründerfonds, growth was scaled in a targeted manner from 2017 and the foundations for international expansion were laid. Since 2020, RateBoard has been part of the Zucchetti Group, one of the largest IT groups in Europe, and thus benefits from a strong international network.
 
Today, RateBoard is active across national borders and is constantly evolving together with a team of over 40 people. More than 1,400 hotels trust the software solution, which offers suitable interfaces to industry-leading PMS and channel managers with over 80 integration partners (including for example protel/planet, oracle, guestline, Hotellinx).

 

8 million price updates per month: modern revenue management as a success factor

The fact that RateBoard has developed from an innovative start-up to a technological pioneer in the hotel industry in a very short space of time is also confirmed by the volume of monthly price updates. In 2020, five years ago, RateBoard updated around 79,000 hotel prices per month - today, just another five years later, there are over 8 million price changes. This corresponds to a frequency of almost 4 updates per second.

It can be seen that the update volume has almost doubled every year since 2020. Both the indispensability of dynamic pricing strategies and the need for revenue management software have become much more relevant in recent years. At the same time, this growth shows how powerful and reliable RateBoard is as a tool to support hoteliers in meeting precisely these requirements. The autopilot feature in particular - the automatic updating of prices - has made a significant contribution to this tremendous development.

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“The increase to over 8 million monthly price updates reflects the increasing integration of our system into the everyday operations of hotels. More and more users are activating the autopilot for automation and relying on data-based decisions in real time. We recognize that dynamic pricing is now a central component of hotels' digital infrastructure."

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The basis for this enormous success is a smart price algorithm that combines artificial intelligence with the special requirements of the hotel industry. Numerous factors are incorporated into the calculation, from seasonal changes, competitor prices and occupancy rates to specific segmentation. This results in precise, data-based price recommendations that effectively support hoteliers. This makes the manual realisation of revenue management completely inefficient and superfluous. Read on to find out why revenue management with Excel is a no-go.

 

In addition to the data-driven pricing algorithm, RateBoard offers a range of innovative functions that make revenue management in hotels even more effective and simple. At the beginning of this year, the new Rule-Based Pricing was introduced - a pricing system that combines individual pricing rules with an AI-supported forecast. Hoteliers can use it to make automated pricing decisions in real time based on factors such as weather, events or occupancy. The result: measurably more efficiency in day-to-day operations and more time for the essentials - the hotel's own guests.

Just in time for its tenth anniversary, RateBoard is setting another milestone with its benchmarking tool. As the first of its type in holiday tourism, it enables a forward-looking price and performance comparison with the competition. It is based on current and anonymized market data instead of outdated guest reports, which often served as the only reference until now. This allows hoteliers to precisely analyze their market position up to twelve months in advance and make strategically informed decisions - directly and clearly in the RateBoard app.

 

Lukas Egger, owner of the Granpanorama Hotel StephansHof, was one of RateBoard's first customers and can now look back on almost ten years of successful collaboration. Originally without in-depth knowledge of revenue management, he quickly recogniszed the potential of data-based pricing strategies to solve a key problem: significant price differences between weekdays and weekends. RateBoard offered a simple, targeted and practical solution.

Egger also describes the analysis tool as his ‘entry point into the day’, which allows him to immediately see pickup, price suggestions and market comparisons at a glance. The segmentation function, which can be used to map travel groups separately, for example, is particularly valuable - a decisive factor for fine-tuning prices.

The new benchmarking tool is also very popular, as it enables market comparisons to be made on a forward-looking data basis. Egger emphasizes that this is a real step forward compared to previous delayed guest reporting data.

Even topics that were initially criticized, such as the introduction of dynamic prices for regular guests, have been successfully established. "A few have dropped out, but the majority have got used to fair, dynamic prices. And the result proves us right", says the owner of StephansHof.

Another plus point is the personal support, which provided important guidance, especially at the beginning - not only for technical questions, but also for strategic decisions. "You could always reach someone, even if it wasn't about technology but about pricing", reports Lukas Egger.

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„Once you switch to dynamic pricing, you often don't want to go back. It's a different world. My tip is to take the plunge and break away from old habits.“

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RateBoard focuses on professional training that combines theory and practice. Prof. Dr Kai-Markus Müller, an expert in pricing psychology, has been part of the team as Chief of Behavioral Strategy since 2024 and contributes his scientific expertise to product development and training in a targeted manner.

A key format for this is the exclusive Hotel Pricing Essentials training series, which was developed especially for RateBoard customers. In workshops and keynote speeches, the latest findings from behavioral economics are translated into real strategies for everyday hotel life - practical, interactive and directly implementable.

 

The next few years at RateBoard will be characterised by intelligent further development. The focus will be on optimising the AI-supported price algorithms, increasing automation and expanding the company's international market presence. The team will continue to grow, particularly in the areas of data science and customer success, in order to provide hoteliers with even more targeted support in the future.

From 2026, RateBoard will also open up to a completely new market segment: a compact solution for private property owners with fewer than ten units will bring professional revenue management to places where there was previously no suitable technology. Uncomplicated, intelligent and tailored precisely to the requirements of small businesses.

„We are constantly developing RateBoard because we are convinced that good technology can significantly simplify everyday life in the hotel industry and increase profitability at the same time“, explains Managing Director Matthias Trenkwalder. „Our goal is clear: we want to make RateBoard one of the leading hospitality tech platforms in Europe.“

We would like to thank all partners, customers and employees who have made this journey possible and look forward to many more years of success together.

 

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