We all love a good debate. Right now, with operators of all shapes & sizes under increasing cost pressure, a hot topic is dynamic pricing. Should hospitality copy the airlines and Ubers of the world, flexing prices by the hour depending on demand? Some argue it’s the future. Others warn of customer backlash.

But here’s the truth: we’re debating the wrong thing. While we argue about the theory of dynamic pricing, millions of pounds are being left on the table because we can’t execute the basics at scale. The real opportunity isn’t in copying airlines. It’s in fixing the clunky processes that stop us getting the most out of pricing strategies we already use today.

What price optimisation really means

Price optimisation isn’t about reacting to demand in real time. It’s about making smarter, data-driven choices on the levers we already pull — menus, price bands, event strategies, bundles, offers & discounts.

The problem isn’t that operators lack ideas. It’s that execution is slow, manual and fragmented. Optimisation is about giving teams the ability to design, deploy, test, and measure these strategies seamlessly, rather than wrestling them through forms, approvals, and manual programming.

Event menus: opportunity lost in admin

Consider event menus. They’re one of the oldest and most effective levers in the book: a focused offer, run at a higher price point, with costs under tighter control. Christmas menus, Valentine’s offers, sports finals – they work.

The issue is scale. Rolling out event menus across hundreds of sites is painfully manual. Ops submit forms, Finance signs off, Marketing produces collateral, IT reprogrammes all the platforms. By the time the menus go live, the opportunity may already have passed. In many cases, they never make it to the floor at all.

It’s not the strategy that fails. It’s the execution. Technology can change this — define an event menu once, automatically deploy it whenever an event of a certain size is taking place within a defined radius of a site, and measure the results. No bottlenecks. No missed opportunities.

Price bands: too blunt for today’s market

Now look at price bands. Most operators use only two or three. Not because that’s ideal, but because anything more is frankly unmanageable.

The result is blunt segmentation. A city centre flagship and a suburban site are often lumped into the same band, despite obvious differences in customer profile and willingness to pay. That leaves significant margin uncaptured.

With smarter tools, operators could run more granular, data-led price bands without adding complexity for Ops or Finance. Pricing could reflect real market conditions — precise, profitable, and easy to manage.

The bigger prize

Dynamic pricing may grab headlines, but the real upside lies in getting the basics right. Smarter optimisation allows operators to:

• Deploy strategies faster, with less admin.
• Tailor pricing more precisely to local markets.
• Test and refine approaches systematically.
• Unlock margin growth without risking consumer trust.

This is value that can be captured today – no hype required.

Time to shift the debate

The real question isn’t whether hospitality should copy airlines. The real question is why so much value is still being lost because our processes make even simple pricing strategies unscalable.

The good news is this isn’t a theoretical problem. The tools now exist to make pricing strategies faster, more precise, and easier to execute across an entire estate. Operators who embrace them will capture margin that’s currently being left on the table.

So let’s stop arguing about the wrong thing. The opportunity isn’t in some distant future of surge pricing. It’s here, in the strategies we already know work – if only we choose to equip ourselves to execute them properly.