The encyclopedia · Sales & Retail · Financial decision · 2014–2018
Holiday Retirement priced 300+ senior-living units with OR and gained $85M in rent revenue
Prorize's SLRO system replaced Holiday's negotiated rents with data-driven pricing: $85M in two years, 9.3% average lift; won the 2017 Edelman Award.
Holiday Retirement · Prorize
The solution
Holiday Retirement, the largest private owner and operator of independent senior living communities in the US, had about $1 billion in annual revenue across more than 300 communities. Rents were set through continual negotiation between corporate, local staff and prospective residents — inconsistent, slow, and leaving revenue on the table.
Holiday partnered with Atlanta-based Prorize, which built the Senior Living Rent Optimizer (SLRO), the industry's first revenue management system. SLRO recommends an optimal price for each unit in each community from demand and occupancy data, replacing bargaining with a consistent, proactive pricing process.
After extensive piloting, Holiday rolled SLRO out across its properties in August 2014. The system delivered $85 million in revenue gain in the first two years — an average 9.3% lift — with an estimated $304 million over five years, and INFORMS awarded the work the 2017 Franz Edelman Award.
Why it worked
- Data-driven pricing sets the right initial rent, removing the discounting and negotiation that erode revenue.
- One consistent process across 300 communities lets local staff sell value instead of haggling over price.
- Occupancy and demand modeling captures willingness to pay that negotiation never revealed.
What can be applied
If prices are set by negotiation, the process itself leaks revenue: replace it with a system that prices each unit from demand data, and consistency adds value beyond the algorithm's estimates.
Aftermath
SLRO generated $85 million in added revenue in its first two years and an estimated $304 million over five years, with sustained annual revenue of about $88 million projected beyond that. The 2017 Edelman Award made Holiday and Prorize the template for senior-living revenue management, and other operators followed.
Sources
- INFORMS awards Holiday Retirement its 2017 Edelman Award
- Holiday Retirement and Prorize Receive Edelman Award
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.