Corporate Maldives Academy (CMA) on Saturday concluded the first Maldives Hotel Revenue and Tech Summit with over 150 participants.

MNU Business School auditorium was filled with enthusiastic participants who were taken on an amazing journey through several aspects of revenue generation in the hospitality industry.

The event commenced with the speech of CMA CEO Ilyas Haneef, who mentioned CMA’s commitment in bringing international speakers to the Maldives to uplift the knowledge and skills of Maldivians.

Afterwards, Vice President of AxisRooms Dr Zak Ali briefed the audience on revenue management principals and components that the industry should focus on to reach better revenue objectives. Importance of data, variable pricing and finding the right value proposition were few of the key focused areas in Dr Zak’s keynote.

Karthikeyan Chellappa, CPO of AxisRooms, talked about a hotelier’s journey with a revenue management system, while Sales and Business Development Manager of AxisRooms Abishek Sawant further enlightened on simplifying hotel operations and distribution. Head of Marketing and Partnerships at RepUp Nirmal Singh Rathod reiterated the importance of shaping the guest experience in increasing revenue.

To provide insight on the prevailing market trends, Digital Marketing Specialist Aminath Zaady explained how to implement a data-driven marketing strategy within organisations. She also emphasised how digital marketing can focus on winning customers and gearing up to generate revenue from a technical perspective.

Sherman D’souza, General Manager of KaptureCRM Technologies, unveiled the tools available for hospitality institutions to automate many components in the hotel management and to provide real-time solutions to customers. The final speaker Anuja Bhosle from Booking.com briefed on strategies and techniques that will improve the chances of making more sales via the site. She also briefed on suggestions to improve the listing properties in the booking.com.

To conclude the summit, Anil Kumar Prasanna, CEO of AxisRooms, launched traveler.mv, an online travel agency based in the Maldives. In support of the development of local tourism entities, it was announced that the Channel Manager Software would be installed free of charge on registration.

CMA, a division of Laniakea Education, was registered with the aim of addressing a serious problem for the corporate sector of Maldives — the absence of a reliable platform for providing continuous training and growth to employees. Options for employers to provide training to employees locally are quite minimal, making provision of training to employees in a sustainable manner a costly affair as they have to resort to overseas training providers.

CMA has amassed an extensive network of global training providers, experts and local trainers who are confident of delivering CMA standard of services as per client’s requirements.

The academy has successfully concluded a marketing forum, and is planning to host a Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Forum and HR Forum this year.