Finance

How do you avoid the fine line between data-driven decision making and analysis paralysis? Don't ask humans to make that decision. Rely on ML algorithms that have developed to the point that allows us to answer this question intelligently and objectively.

The purpose of gathering and analyzing information is to produce a strategic course of action which changes or improves our desired outcome. Our goal is to reduce the time between data gathering and formulating and implementing actionable outcomes, or what I refer to as analytics efficiency.

There is no fine line. There is just misconception. We have been drilled as an industry to see data analytics as this art that we are too "dumb" to understand as a user. Therefore the industry was driven by BI and Revenue vendors with even bigger dashboards, even more details "because without it you cannot live".

A positive Guest experience is driving and maximizing revenue. Without it you are punching above your weight and possibly get knocked out faster than you can imagine. We will only know if our price is right once the customer sits back at home reflecting on the experience they had.

Today's typical online travel consumer - your past, current and future hotel guest - is exposed to more than 250,000 digital micro-moments a year: from social media interactions to messaging and quick read of the headlines on their smartphones (Google Research).

The evolution of Revenue Strategy as science more than art has certainly created further division between the needs of our owners and the needs of our customers. However, at the heart of each hotel strategy is the Long Term Value (LTV) of a customer which we now need to protect and defend at all costs.

Traditionally, RevPAR was the gold standard metric to apply to revenue KPIs. It was and still is used as the measure of financial market strength. While RevPAR is a good depiction of profitability when the market is in a "typical" state, it can obscure a hotel's performance when it veers away from the norm – a condition the industry hasn't seen since early 2020.

I am happy to see this topic gaining momentum. Profit optimization in today's environment is key to your entity's success. Revenue optimization will continue to evolve and grow in sophistication as the practice matures, as the distribution landscape changes around it, and as new technologies emerge to support and disrupt hotels' strategies.

Back in 2014, I published an article "Things you didn't know about RevPAR (or: ARPAR as a better performance indicator" where I described the new index for profit tracking and profit maximization I had developed: Adjusted RevPAR (ARPAR), which also made its way to wikipedia and has been adopted by hospitality companies across the globe.

Just like any accounting topic, flow through and flex ratios look complex to many, and the interpretation with both the positive and negative signs resulting from the calculation also seems complicated. However, just like any accounting topic, once we take a few minutes and explore some examples, they are actually quite simple and amazingly useful.

Flow thru is first of all "a concept" and it's wrapped around the idea that if revenues go up or down my profit "should" react in a prescribed manner if I'm doing a good job as a manager controlling my payroll and expenses. It's rather straightforward when things move up together, for example, revenues are up 100k compared to the same month last year and my GOP is up 60k – my flow is 60%.

The simplest way to calculate profit flow through is take following steps: 1. Determine difference in dollar amount between Current Period Profit (Net Income, GOP or other profit KPI) and Previous Period Profit. This is A in the formula that will follow.

First things first: THERE IS NO NEW NORMAL! The new normal was a mix of government imposed social distancing restrictions that lead to increased costs coupled with mass layoffs and reduced available inventory = Pay it, suck it up or leave it.

Focus to increase NOI, I think is an import topic and item to think about when hotels are working to further optimize revenue. So finding revenue with a high margin is key. A first process to implement, ideally fully automated would be upselling of room upgrades, and monazite early arrival and late departure.

Historical data has become completely obsolete because of the pandemic and the current inflation. If your King Room went for $200 on September 20th of 2019 at 75% occupancy, how much should you charge in 2022 at 60% occupancy, citywides down by 70%; corporate groups down by 40%; corporate transients down 35% and Inflation at 8.5%?

Post Covid-19, more than ever what will get reinforced is that resources (human & others) will follow business volumes more closely even given that the hospitality is a seasonal business for decades.While this may not necessarily cause drastic changes in rank and file headcount, in my opinion what will definitely be shaken up is the managerial level and the manager to employee ratioMore supervisors and assistant managers will be expected to take on managerial roles while managers will be expected to become more hands on - ready to take on an assistant manager or sometimes even supervisor role when business volumes are strainedCubicle bound managers (if ever in the hospitality business that scourge existed!) will be eliminated;I see something else coming - the back or rather heart of house roles like finance, human resources, engineering may now need to become all round operation individuals and contribute to serving the customer; after all, say, in finance, what accounting will need to be done when there is no customer coming through the doorAs far as leadership is concerned, what will change is a mindset of general managers becoming hands on - they may not have the luxury any more of delegating to a RM or HM who honestly may not be thereGiven volatile business levels, having combined property and regional positions may not be justifiable as a business decision; moreover, in that combination, the property focus will now become 100% which again negates any combination positions being thought ofIn all of this, and underpinning strategies, a Flexible Budgeting process will become mandatory - flexibility in headcount levels in conjunction with fluctuating business volumes, remuneration cuts when business volumes drop below a certain point, increments tied to incremental revenue and bottom line and so on.If hospitality was and will always be a seasonal industry it is going to become an industry of focused business volumes metric driven resource utilization strategiesBottom line retention will be dictated by the customer in all of these scenarios

During the peak period of the pandemic, we saw a widespread purge of unit, area/regional, and corporate level leadership roles being consolidated or purged altogether. Those initiatives were taken to preserve cash flow by controlling labor-related expenses.

I think in life you get what you pay for. My point of reference here is a full-service managed and branded hotel. I believe when you pay for and get an executive team that has all the critical bases covered your hotel will get better results in all areas, including service, engagement, and profits.

During pandemic we have seen an increase in package and leisure sales, especially for the non-central hotels. With travelers willing to spend more money on theirselves many hotels have seen an increase in incremental revenue. We see an increase in requests for Total Revenue Management projects now that restrictions are lifted and demand is returning.

More than asking if hotels should diversify their revenue streams now, they should be asked what has stopped them doing so earlier!, or in other words, why do hotels only do revenue management in the space where there is a bed?

Many hotels have been diversifying their income streams for ages. Though, the entire industry has still been measuring its performance through RevPAR as being a de facto metric since the Revenue Management discipline was born.

Having spend the last few years making exactly this point, and previously in hotel operational finance, I am very pleased to see the industry moving in this direction. Many operators have already moved to include a profit index in their reporting and some owners have even been successful in including in the management agreement as a performance measure.

Owners have historically used avaialble financial benchmarking reports becuase their ability to pay debt and earn a return on their investment is dependent on the bottom-line, not the top-line. It takes more of an effort to convince operators that they can benefit by comparing the operating performance of their hotels to comparable properties.

I'm a firm believer that the best hoteliers and GM's are those that are financially literate. Obviously, there is more to leading a hotel than just financial literacy, but it is a huge component. I also believe that as hotel leaders we should constantly be growing our Lid's to steal a concept from John Maxwell.

First and foremost we need to make sure that we are showcasing commercials in hotels as a career path that is worth pursuing as we have seen industry drainage of talent due to working conditions as well as pay-scale. As a career path you can come up to the top of commercials across all three and where you spent your majority of time will determine which part of the hotels lifecycle your skills will be useful.

It's RM, no doubt. As this is the only discipline that truly knows what's going on, as the only data-oriented department in hotel operations.We already have very many examples in the industry of former revenue managers advancing into C-level roles and becoming successful strategic leaders thanks to their analytical skills, deep understanding of data, and ability to see how different actions by different departments affect the bottom-line profit and operating efficiencies of the entire organization.Our new digitized reality dictates that data is our new currency.

One fairly simple focus will be to implement a digital up-sell strategy. Exact figures are hard to find but it seems that 85% of the hotels globally do not have a digital up-sell strategy. Some don't even up-sell at all. This is basically leaving money on the table.

Having clients all over the world, I can say I have direct experience with the issue. And it's no fun. As a consultant, it's frustrating to go on a call and celebrate the hotel's best year ever, hang up and speak to another client running at 1/10 of 2019 occupation rate...

Let's remind everyone what the primary goal of revenue management (RM) is: to ensure that the property sells the right product to the right customer at the right time for the right price on the right channel. In the past revenue management systems (RMS) and revenue managers used historical, comp set pricing and market data and combined this with forward-looking demand signals like pacing to recommend the optimum rates.

To me, it's not a question of whether technology (and AI/ML in particular) is good or not for the Revenue Management discipline. The question is: why are we, as an industry, so far behind other sectors when it comes to the adoption of automated tools and especially Machine Learning in our decision making process?

Over the last 10 years, there have been great advancements on hotel revenue management systems, especially in the areas of price optimization as well as inventory controls. With most major brands and independent hotels on high performing markets adopting customized systems, these applications have proven to be essential for the revenue management in today's world.

Hardship sparks creativity. Hotels all around the globe were forced to fundamentally rethink revenue generation during the Covid crisis. Like so often, many successful concepts started with putting the guest at the centre and looking at what (s)he really wants right now, not what it is that we traditionally like to sell (a room night with breakfast).

In the post-pandemic world, I see three significant revenue generation initiatives for the utilization of the hotel spaces: 1. Create co-working spaces: Similar to Roger Smith Hotel's KettleSpace Flexible Workspaces, create work-from-hotel spaces for out-of-towners, digital nomads and local entrepreneurs who do not want to be tied down by office leases.

Every square metre can potentially generate extra revenue for a hotel, but many properties keep only strategizing the bedrooms' revenue.Ideas? Here are a few:Pre-arrival:Upsell rooms and added value packages and items via app and mailing, with tools such as Oaky or UpsellGuruReview your room inventory.