When it comes to hotel or accommodation management, your data is one of the most valuable assets you have. The benefits of having access to and tracking the data available to you can’t be underestimated. It’s not just about making smarter business decisions based on facts rather than guesswork. Providing you have access to the right insights and tools you can also outsmart your competition and optimise your pricing, occupancy and distribution strategy. All of which would ultimately lead to increased revenue and profits. So what are the most important metrics your hotel needs to track?
Key Metrics For The Hotel Industry
RevPAR
RevPAR stands for Revenue Per Available Room and is considered by many in the accommodation industry to be one of the most important Key Performance Indicators (KPI). Understanding RevPar helps you to maximise the revenue generated per room.
However an even more powerful metric is to be able to compare your RevPAR with your competitors. RevPAR is calculated by using the Average Daily Rate ($) and dividing this by the Occupancy (%) to understand how to effectively price available rooms.
Comparing RevPAR highlights how successful your property is against competitors in achieving a high occupancy rate for a specific set period. However, consideration needs to be taken when working towards improving your RevPAR (attracting more guests/higher occupancy) as the goal should be to improve financial performance overall. So you need to keep in mind that more guests often mean higher costs involved with facilitating them.
Occupancy Rate
Occupancy rate is the percentage of occupied rooms in your hotel at any given time and is one of the most simple but vital calculations for you to perform. It is calculated by dividing the total number of rooms occupied, by the total number of rooms available and multiplying by 100 to give you a percentage.
Analysing the occupancy rate by room type allows you to discover what room types outperform others and to discover what room types have opportunities to fill.
Compare Average Daily Rate
As the name suggests the Average Daily Rate (ADR) measures the average price paid per room. This hotel benchmarking metric is calculated by taking the average revenue earned from ALL rooms and dividing it by the number of rooms sold.
If you are able to compare your ADR with your competitors this is an even more powerful KPI as it gives you an accurate understanding of your local market and highlights opportunities where you can increase or reduce rates. Ensuring your pricing is always positioned effectively within your local market is a key indicator of topline performance.
Channel Performance
Understanding which of your marketing channels is delivering the most bookings and which are under-performing can ensure that you focus your marketing budget effectively.
It’s important to recognise that identifying where the most number of bookings are coming from and the most amount of revenue can often differ. Ensure that channel performance is built into your property analytics so you can unlock insights into the revenue that is generated from specific sources and develop a greater understanding of how this impacts your bottom line.
Booking Lead Time
Another really useful metric for hotels is the Booking Lead Time. This calculates the average time between a customer booking vs their arrival date based on a nominated period. For example, a customer who stays on June 1st, booked on May 18th, has a lead time of 14 days.
Booking Lead Time analysis allows you to discover the average time between someone booking to their arrival date giving you a clear understanding of what level of occupancy future months are expected to be at. Knowing what your average room cost is per night (by taking into consideration staff costs, laundry, amenities, cleaning supplies, utilities etc) allows you to identify specific periods that may need their rate adjusting.
Visitor Geo Status
Gaining an understanding of where consumers are booking from and where the property’s revenue is coming from can give you a significant strategic advantage. Data insights such as the geographic location of your guests and ‘browsers’ of your website will help you to strategically plan future marketing campaigns including which locations are going to give you the best ‘bang for your buck’!
Available Room Nights
Monitoring your Available Room Nights for each individual room type in a specific period is another basic but valuable metric for any accommodation business. The available room nights on the 1st of June for a one-bedroom unit are calculated using the following formula. If you have 10 one-bedroom units, and 5 are occupied, you have 5 available room nights for the one-bedroom units on the 1st of June.
This KPI allows you to determine whether there is a specific room type that needs further promotion and ensures you maintain a high occupancy rate.
Imagine if you had all of this information and more at your fingertips? How much more powerful would your marketing be? Being able to set prices based on accurate data, including that of your competitors gives you the best opportunity to increase revenue and profitability.
Data is the life-force of any business and hotels and accommodation businesses are no exception. When a software package comes with the option to access one of the most powerful and easy to use property analytics tools, like HiSITE Business Analytics, you have a distinct competitive advantage.
Don’t leave the profitability of your hotel or accommodation business to luck. Take control of your data analytics and find out how HiSITE can help you stay ahead of the competition.
