The Chester Hotel, Aberdeen draws on Europe-wide expertise

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The hotel requires a complex set of skills to maximise its combination of rooms, suites, meetings and events, using HotelPartner Revenue Management to drive profits

Set in the heart of Aberdeen’s fashionable west end, The Chester Hotel has 64 luxurious bedrooms and suites, as well as a fine-dining restaurant, conference facilities for up to 300 delegates and a wedding venue for up to 250. Spread across five 19th century listed buildings, this design-led property also prides itself on its sustainability policies.

As revenue management becomes ever-more complicated, Stephen Gow, GM, looked to HotelPartner Revenue Management for its depth of understanding.

Gow said: “Revenue management has become much more complicated, it’s more of a science than an art and, as an independent hotel, we have decided to outsource. We don’t have access to the large teams of revenue managers you would if you were part of a chain.

“We have turned to HotelPartner to provide that expertise, all that knowledge about how all the channels work, how we integrate with them, where the market is going in our city at any particular time, what the rates are looking like, what competitor sets look like. They can draw on their experience to understand how much we can push rate, while also understanding our strategy: I’d would rather have rate than occupancy, because rate is profit.

“The other area we have utilised is the effective use of AI, which works well in pricing situations, in terms of modelling and helping to predict.

“Revenue management is not simple, I don’t understand every detail of it and that’s why I employ people who do. It is incredibly important, because I make more money from my rooms than anything else, but if my rooms are busy, then my bars are busy and my restaurants are busy.

“Outsourcing de-risks revenue management perfectly, because we able to use experts in that area. It also de-risks from a people point of view, by giving us access to a full team, when we would only be able to afford one full-time revenue manager.”

Scotland is facing additional challenges with the introduction of the Transient Visitor Levy, due to be introduced in the Scottish capital in July 2026.

Gow added: “We need to start thinking now about how we are going to manage that increase. It happens that hotels in Amsterdam are going through a similar experience, with VAT increasing from 9% to 21% in 2026, so using a team with a view across Europe means that they can prepare us by calling on the skills they have already developed.”

Robert Holland, managing director UK & Ireland, HotelPartner, said: “We are only too aware of the trust that is required from Hoteliers to allow our service and platform to function and perform. Whilst our strategies are regularly monitored by our team of revenue managers, with decisions being made in real time 24/7, it is imperative that there is complete trust between our team and our partner hotels.

“Stephen has been a huge supporter of HotelPartner since we launched in the UK over seven years ago and we are incredibly grateful for the trust that he has placed in our team. We very much look forward to addressing any challenges that the market may throw at us, together, as partners.”