Madness to Method · A free series
Madness to Method
Practical hotel revenue management education. Turning reliable data into better commercial decisions.
What Madness to Method is
Madness to Method is a free series of four lessons on making pricing decisions from numbers you can trust. It starts where most hotels are today. There are too many systems, each with a different number, and a report that is out of date by the time it is sent. It ends with a short routine you can run every morning.
The series grew out of my workshop "From Madness to Method: Turn Data You Can Trust into Bookings", given at the 6th Revenue MasterClass by RevitUp.direct in Heraklion, Crete, on 16 October 2026. The workshop had 40 minutes. These lessons take the same ideas further, with worked examples and exercises you can do at your own hotel.
Why it exists
The problem is rarely a lack of data. It is too much data, in too many systems, with time-consuming reports, constant cross-checking, and numbers that change while you work. Then it all has to be repeated the next day.
What hoteliers need is data they can trust, in one place, and a method for reading it, so that the same work is not done twice and decisions do not depend on whichever number arrived last.
Who it is for
Anyone who sets room prices or advises on them:
- owners and general managers who do everything themselves
- revenue managers, and e-commerce and reservations teams
- sales and marketing managers
- rental and property managers
- consultants and advisors
You do not need formal revenue management training. You need to be comfortable with percentages. Every term is explained the first time it appears, and every exercise can be done with a calculator.
What you will learn
| Lesson | You will be able to |
|---|---|
| Lesson 1 · From Madness to Method | turn a vague request into a commercial question, choose which number to trust, and tell data from information, insight and action |
| Lesson 2 · Your Hotel Is 65% Occupied. So What? | calculate occupancy, ADR, RevPAR and pickup, and read a date against the same time last year |
| Lesson 3 · The Price Is Not the Strategy | judge whether a competitor's price is comparable, and justify raising, holding or lowering a price with evidence |
| Lesson 4 · The 15-Minute Revenue Management Routine | run a five-stage daily review and keep a decision log |
How the lessons work
Every lesson has the same shape:
- The problem it solves, and what you will be able to do by the end.
- An explanation in plain language.
- A worked example with a hotel's numbers.
- Guided practice, then practice on your own.
- A knowledge check, with the answers and the common mistakes explained.
- A short task to try at your own hotel.
The examples use MyDemoHotel, a fictional 120-room hotel in Crete, the same hotel as in the workshop. All its numbers are illustrative. Answers stay hidden until you open them, so you can try first.
Each lesson takes about 20 to 30 minutes (estimate). The four together take about two hours.
How to begin, and how to progress
Start with Lesson 1 and take the lessons in order. Each one uses what the one before it taught. Lesson 4 brings everything together, so it is the one to come back to.
If you already work with pickup and pace every day, you can start with Lesson 2's knowledge check. If you get all six answers right, move on to Lesson 3.
After the series, run the Lesson 4 routine every morning for two weeks, and keep the decision log. Then compare your decisions with what happened. That comparison is where the method becomes your own.
Go deeper
These guides on this site cover the subjects behind the lessons in more depth:
- Hotel Revenue Management: A Complete Practical Guide
- Hotel Market Intelligence, Rate Shopping and Analytics
- Hotel PMS and Operations: A Complete Practical Guide
- Hotel Distribution and Connectivity: A Complete Guide
About the author
I am Richard Bedenham, Director of PrimalRMS Ltd, a revplus company. I work on revhero, Revplus Group's revenue management system, and RoomPulse, its rate shopping tool, so weigh what I say about technology accordingly. These lessons are written to work with any system, or with none.
If you use revhero, the same day from the workshop is taught through revhero's own screens in the From madness to method course in the revhero manual.