In an age where competition has never been tougher, benchmarking is your compass. This guide provides an overview of benchmarking and best practices in revenue management.
Do you remember back in school when you learned about homographs? You remember, of course, those are words that have the same spelling as another word but have a different sound and meaning. What does this have to do with operational benchmarking? Is spelling important? Well, yes and no, spelling is always important, but when implementing operational benchmarking as part of the finance culture of the organization, it is important to understand what is significant in terms of your operation.
Traditional hotel benchmarking generally focuses on comparing rates and occupancy, without shedding light on how the results came to be. Today, however, hotels can access new benchmarking technology that takes a fresh approach, providing real-time insights to help you break down the entire booking funnel and compare your hotel's direct booking performance to the competition.
Exploring and mining for revenue generation outside of rooms is a first step in getting back to profitability. By measuring and monitoring total revenue per available room (TRevPAR), hoteliers have the ability to take a magnifying glass to all revenue sources and identify both underperformance and outperformance. Above all, it can reveal revenue opportunities to help carry a hotel out of the pandemic carnage.
Looking for a hotel KPI that’s guaranteed to support a stronger hotel performance plan? Try gross operating profit per available room (GOPPAR) on for size. Sure, the top line matters—you can’t turn a profit without revenue—but the bottom line is a true measurement of all hotel revenue and expense. That’s where GOPPAR becomes the gold standard of hotel KPIs.
Like it or not, your hotel is in the middle of a race with the competition - although the current hotel climate may feel more like an obstacle course. Wouldn’t it be nice if, during this ongoing marathon, you could peek across at competitors, note their positions and analyze the techniques, equipment and other factors propelling them forward?
The hotel industry won’t emerge from the financial chasm caused by COVID-19 overnight, but recent data already points to a rebound. Benchmarking could help quicken the pace of recovery. As the hotel industry continues to thrash its way through the pandemic, hotel benchmarking has the power to not only keep hotels afloat, but also help lift the sector to solid financial ground once again.
In the hotel industry, the deeper decision-makers can drill down into departmental figures, the easier it is to generate revenue, chisel away at unnecessary costs and post a healthy profit. Simply put, the best decisions are driven by in-depth analysis of departmental revenue and operational costs. Sound like too much work? Analyzing these critical figures and unlocking higher profits may be easier than you think.