Why is Food Waste Hotel Owners’ Next Big Thing
The whitepaper provides financial modeling templates and case studies showing hotel owners can achieve significant savings, with Constance Hotels saving $2.3M through food waste reduction programs.
Opinion Articles
Marriott didn't spend $355M to buy 36 small-room hotels
The acquisition gives Marriott a proven urban lifestyle concept with 8,700 rooms and plugs citizenM's design-focused guests into Bonvoy's 260M-member loyalty program.
By Nicolas Vorsteher, Founder & CEO, chatlyn
Anticipating the Surge: How Hospitality America is Positioning for the 2026 FIFA World Cup
Hospitality America outlines a four-pillar revenue strategy targeting 20-45% ADR increases across 16 host cities, with emphasis on rate integrity and spillover market capture.
By Daniel Lock, VP of Commercial Strategy, Hospitality America
One Revenue Manager. Ten Looks. The Revenue Management wardrobe.
Bartnick outlines ten revenue management scenarios and contrasts amateur mistakes with expert strategies for maximizing hotel profitability.
By Fabian Bartnick, Founder, Infinito
CEO Pay in Hospitality 2025
In last year’s study of CEO pay, we explored the ongoing shifts in compensation following the pandemic’s disruptive impact on the hospitality industry. This year, we turn our focus to a period defined by mounting global uncertainty, driven by political transitions, tariffs and worldwide trade deals. Amid this backdrop, reassessing CEO compensation and corresponding performance metrics has been critical.
By Emily Whitmore and Keith Kefgen
How the USALI 12th Revised Edition Enhances Hotel Benchmarking and Drives Hotel Performance
Questions are commonplace in any hotel business. Who hasn't been in a budget meeting or financial review when someone has asked if the food and beverage margins are competitive, or if the spa department should be generating more revenue, or how labor efficiencies compare to other properties of the same size? Transforming these questions into actionable insights is what hotel benchmarking can do—creating concrete, data-backed comparisons.
By Arlene Ramirez, Senior Vice President of Learning, HFTP
Restricted Appraisal vs. Standard Appraisal: Understanding the Differences
Per the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP), there are two appraisal report formats: the restricted appraisal report and the standard appraisal report. But what’s the difference between these two report types, and how do you choose the right type for you?
By Brian Bisema, Managing Director and Partner of HVS Boston, HVS
Begin With The End In Mind – Creating a Financially Engaged Leadership Team In Your Hotel
Creating a financially engaged leadership team in your hotel is no different from creating a strong guest service culture or a team that has colleague and leader engagement as their mission. What you attend to grows, it’s that simple. What’s different with the finances is you and your focus. The picture you want to create needs to be clear, and you need to have a plan to follow and resources to employ to create financial leadership. It’s no different from guest service or colleague engagement. We would not expect these two disciplines to grow and prosper in our hotel on their own. No, we recognize that these require constant attention and nurturing. The financial leadership in your hotel is exactly the same.
By David Lund, The Hotel Financial Coach, David Lund
Top 10 Hotel Industry Concerns
I spent some time researching what are the main concerns of hotel company leaders. I put the list below, but it is quite familiar: People, talent, and culture top the chart. Finding and keeping good staff has apparently never been harder.
By Martin Soler, Partner, Soler & Associates
2025/26 Federal Per-Diem Update: Steady Rates Ahead
The federal government per-diem rate is made up of a lodging allowance and a meals and incidental expense (M&IE) allowance. The per-diem lodging rates, which set the maximum amount a federal traveler can reimburse, are based on the average rates for mid-priced hotels and are set annually by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA). A standard rate applies to most of the continental United States (CONUS), while individual rates apply to about 300 non-standard areas (NSAs), mostly comprising primary destinations or key cities.
By Chelsey Leffet, Managing Director, Northeast Leader, HVS
H1 2025 European Hotel Transactions
Transaction activity remained high in the first half of 2025, marginally shy of the 2024 levels over the same period but, at €10.4 billion, above the average for the last decade. Single-asset deals were at the forefront of the investment landscape in H1 2025, with the total number of transactions increasing by 21% year-on-year. An increase of 9% in the average number of rooms per hotel transacted has led to a decrease in the average price per room of 8% compared to H1 2024.
By Sophie Perret and Maxime Gauthier
Dynamic Budgeting: Redefining the True Cost of Visibility
For too long, the debate around hotel distribution has been framed within a deceptively simple equation: place the commission paid to an OTA on one side, measure the acquisition cost of a direct booking on the other, and then declare whichever is lower the winning option. If a marketing campaign produces a cost per acquisition above the sacred 20 percent commission threshold, it is quickly branded as inefficient, a waste of money, an error to be avoided. This binary reasoning, however, is an intellectual shortcut that strips the discussion of its deeper meaning. It overlooks the fundamental truth that the direct channel is not merely another distribution outlet in a portfolio of options, but the sovereign foundation of the hotel itself, the only arena where control over communication, guest data, and the relationship can be fully maintained.
By Piergiorgio Schirru, Executive Vice President & Board Member, Blastness
Beyond the Skyline: How Global Investors Are Winning in the UAE Hospitality Market
In the lead up to the Future Hospitality Summit - FHS World 2025, taking place at Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai from 27-29 October, Amr El Nady provides insights for international investors looking to enter the UAE's hospitality sector, including the regulatory framework, market performance and lending and debt liquidity landscape.
By Amr El Nady, Head of Hotels & Hospitality MEA and Managing Director, Global Hotel Desk, JLL, The Bench
Budgeting for 2026: A Strategic Approach for Hoteliers
Budget season isn’t just about numbers—it’s about vision. As a hotel finance executive, I have found that success in 2026 will come down to discipline, collaboration, and clarity. Hoteliers face a marketplace defined by uncertainty: shifting demand patterns, evolving technology, rising operating costs, and persistent talent pressures. Yet, uncertainty is precisely why a strong, collaborative budgeting process is essential.
By Paul Isaacson, Chief Financial Officer, Hospitality America
Budgeting for Experiential Tech in 2026: Why Hoteliers Cannot Afford to Wait
As summer winds down and the robust vacation season slows, it’s time for resort and venue operators to shift gears and ramp up for budget season. Fall offers the perfect opportunity to take a step back, evaluate what worked, what didn’t, and new opportunities to improve both operations and revenue in the coming year. With advances in experiential technology and AI, businesses can plan smarter, crafting memorable guest experiences that align with evolving expectations while staying budget-conscious.
By Tracee Nalewak, Chief Growth Officer, UrVenue
The Hotel Brands of the World
About a year ago, I shared the Hotel Brand Pyramid a chart I had picked up at a seminar. It turned out to be both old and incomplete, and the feedback came in fast: wrong brands, missing brands, and far too simplistic for today’s hotel landscape. Fair enough. So, together with the 10minutes.news team, we set out to make the definitive version: The Hotel Brands of the World infographic.
By Martin Soler, Partner, Soler & Associates
A Recipe for Cost Control Success: 5 Lessons from F&B for Hotel Budget Season
As hotels move into budget season, executives are once again scrutinizing expenses across departments. Food and beverage (F&B) often takes center stage because the practices for managing costs there are well established: portion sizes are tracked, spoilage is audited, and menus are engineered to maximize profitability. Operators know that without discipline, margins can erode quickly.
By Mike Pavicich, Director, Global Sales, SalesAndCatering.com, LLC
Lessons in Scalable Growth: How We Closed 150+ Transactions Across 20 Markets Without Losing Local Relevance
Scaling a business is easy to talk about, but rarely easy to do, especially when the ambition involves not only new markets, but also new cultures, regulations, and expectations. Over the past decade, I’ve had the opportunity to support the growth of a global hospitality group, closing over 150 transactions and entering more than 20 new markets across EMEA. Through that journey, I’ve learned that sustainable expansion isn’t about copying and pasting a playbook. It’s about designing a framework flexible enough to adapt - yet rigorous enough to scale.
By Ramsay Rankoussi, Regional Chief Development Officer, Radisson Hotel Group
AI, Michelin Stars & Real Estate: Highlights from HFE 2025
On July 7–8, 2025, EHL Hospitality Business School’s Lausanne campus welcomed the 9th Hospitality Finance & Economics (HFE) Conference, organized in collaboration with the Center for Urban and Real Estate Studies at Hitotsubashi University and the NUS Institute of Real Estate & Urban Studies. Seventeen researchers from four continents turned each session into a dynamic and insightful exchange on topics ranging from climate risk and affordability to the burgeoning world of digital real-estate markets.
By René-Ojas Woltering and Masaki Mori
Creating Property Performance Commentaries
Creating a great commentary for your owners and corporate is a monthly mainstay in almost every hotel. It can also be a large dose of drudgery. This article is about how you can create an effective system in your hotel to generate a strong and meaningful commentary based on information from all areas of your business. Creating this kind of information system in your hotel is a powerful tool. This commentary power tool can help you drive superior financial results if you approach it with the right spirt and a system to follow.
By David Lund, The Hotel Financial Coach, David Lund