Jon Sholter
Today, in less than 3 minutes, we are going to cover the following: Some underrated expenses that deserve your attention.
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There are a ton of line items on your hotel income statement.
It can be daunting looking at your budget every year. Sure, the numbers are all there in black and white, but what are they telling you? A great operator needs to make their financial data actionable. Today we will look at three overlooked costs as examples to show how to go beneath the numbers.
Let's dig in.
Laundry Room Hours
Everyone seems to measure their housekeeping productivity, but few measure their laundry room productivity. Operators need to set aside metrics to ensure this department is meeting their numbers. The easiest way to start is finding a minute per occupied room metric, between 5 - 8 depending on the type of hotel and ensure this number is met by the end of week. If not specific enough for some hoteliers, you can use a minute per checkout.
Toilet Leaks Ensure you are monitoring your water usage in reference to your occupied rooms (or number of guests if you have accurate data). If you ever see a discrepancy or do not notice much difference between low occupancy and high occupancy, you might have a toilet leak issue. Leaking toilets cost a fortune so it's also recommended to check for this proactively instead of reactively.
DND's
Many hoteliers attribute housekeeping math to checkouts and stayovers, but forget to deduct Do Not Disturbs. Some even give credit for DND rooms to guests, but still do not consider them in their numbers. Low hanging fruit.
If you do not measure it, you will not save it.
The point in all of this is you want to understand how you got to the number staring you in the face. In the above examples, do the laundry, water and housekeeping costs line up for your hotel on a per-occupied room basis? Or are they just another number on your income statement, reflected as a percentage of revenue?
If this is a problem you face, you can start working on systems to get you the data you require.
Manual collection of data is an option, but you can also consider investing in software to do it for you. Labour-optimizing software has existed for a while and is recommended. Depending on your water costs, toilet sensors that alert you of a running toilet may also be worth investigating.
Your hotel has a lot of numbers to dig into, but don't ignore these 3.
Whenever you’re ready, there are 4 ways we can help you:
High Impact Coaching
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Supercharged Consulting
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Hotel Executive Program
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