Hotel success stories: why your hotel restaurant does not need someone else’s to decide

When a hotel restaurant evaluates a point of sale, the conversation almost always reaches the same point: “Do you have a success story from a hotel like mine?” It is a reasonable question. And the honest answer is that no one else’s case will tell you what happens in your restaurant, because the hotel in the story has a different occupancy, a different guest, a different agreement and a different team. The only thing that can decide for you is your own baseline, and that is measured in thirty days.

What someone else’s success story cannot tell you

A success story tells what happened at a specific hotel, from a specific starting point, after a specific change. What it does not tell is which of those three things explains the result. If revenue per occupied room went up, was it the system, was it that they changed the chef, was it that the destination had more occupancy that year, or was it that they finally recorded included breakfast at an allocation value?

Besides, the other hotel’s case does not share your leaks. Maybe at that hotel the problem was the shift close and at yours it is that the pool bar charges in a notebook. Maybe over there folio charges arrived late and here they arrive on time but with discounts nobody authorized. When you read someone else’s case, you see their illness and their cure. You do not see yours.

That is why in this house we prefer to talk about what can actually be verified: how to measure your starting point and how to compare later against that same point (Success stories). The success story that matters to you is the one you have not written yet, and the first chapter is the baseline.

The five numbers of your baseline

A baseline is the picture of your restaurant before changing anything. It does not need to be perfect, it needs to be honest and repeatable: the same five numbers, measured the same way, for thirty days. These are the ones that say the most about a hotel restaurant.

1. Food and beverage revenue per occupied room: net revenue from every revenue center divided by occupied room nights for the month (/blog/como-se-calcula-el-consumo-de-alimentos-y-bebidas-por-habitacion-ocupada).
2. Share of guests who consumed: of all the stays in the month, how many had at least one folio charge from any revenue center.
3. Folio charges with a dispute: how many restaurant room charges were questioned, adjusted or rejected by the guest at check-out, and for what amount.
4. Comps and discounts: total amount for the month and how many carry a named authorization.
5. Shift close variance: the sum of differences between declared and expected at the close of every revenue center, positive and negative.

All five can be measured with what you have today, even if with more manual work than you would like. And that difficulty in measuring them is already information: if it takes you two days to know how many guests consumed, that is part of the problem you want to solve.

How to measure them for thirty days without changing anything

The golden rule of the baseline is not to touch the operation while you measure it. If you change the menu, the hours or the system halfway through, you no longer know what caused what. Thirty days is enough to cover four weekends and a monthly close, and short enough for the team to keep up the discipline.

Week one: definitions

Write down how you will calculate each number, who will capture it and at what time. Revenue is net, without tax or tips. Occupied nights come from the front desk with the same cut-off date. A comp is any consumption that was not charged, even if it was “just a coffee”. Without written definitions, every week you will measure something different.

Weeks two to four: daily capture

Every day, at close, the five numbers for the day are filled into a single sheet. They are not interpreted, only captured. If a figure is missing one day, it is marked as missing, not invented. At the end of the month, the number of days with missing data is also part of the baseline.

Day thirty-one: the picture

The thirty days are added up, the five numbers for the month are calculated and written on a sheet that is never touched again. That is your baseline. From there, any change you make is compared against it, not against what someone remembers used to happen.

An illustrative example with numbers

The figures below are invented to show what a baseline looks like and how it is compared later. They are not market data and not from any hotel.

The first thing to notice is the occupied nights row: it is the same in both months. That does not happen in real life, which is why in practice you compare revenue per occupied room and not total revenue. In the example, with the same occupancy, the hotel restaurant generated 15,600 more, which is exactly 20 for each of the 780 nights.

The second thing is that the other four numbers explain where that revenue came from. More guests consumed (from 50 % to 65 % of stays), fewer charges fell off at check-out (from 18 to 4), comps went down by 3,300 and now all of them have an owner, and the close ended 2,200 closer to zero. None of those four is another hotel’s success story. They are yours, and that is why you believe them.

How to read the results

A baseline is good for three things: knowing where you are, deciding what to change first and checking afterwards whether the change worked. For the second, look at which of the five numbers is furthest from where it should be. If half your guests do not consume, the problem is guest capture, and there frictionless room charge and room service by messaging weigh the most. If folio charges fall off at check-out, the problem is verification. If the close does not balance, the problem is control.

For the third, the check, the rule is to compare the same number with the same definition and similar occupancy. If your occupancy rose a lot from one month to the next, total revenue will rise even if you improved nothing; that is why revenue per occupied room is the one that rules. And if the comparison month had a big event, separate it, because a group of sixty people distorts any average at a forty-room hotel.

• Compare the same number, calculated with the same definition written in week one.
• Compare against similar occupancy, or always use revenue per occupied room.
• Separate groups and large events, both in the baseline and in the comparison month.
• Wait at least two months after the change before concluding; the first one is the team’s learning month.
• Write the conclusion with the number, not the adjective. “Up 20 per occupied room” and not “much better”.

Deciding with your numbers

With the baseline in hand, the decision to change systems stops being a debate of opinions and becomes a question of arithmetic. If the main problem is the example’s 18 disputed charges for 9,200 a month, the question is whether the new system verifies the folio before posting. If it is comps without an owner, the question is whether it forces you to record who authorized. If it is the close, the question is whether the close is done by revenue center with expected cash calculated by the system.

And the price decision changes too. A system with one price per property per month is compared against the numbers in your baseline, not against a promise. If the charges that fall off at check-out and the comps without authorization add up to more than the system costs, the math does itself. If they do not, maybe your problem is something else, and that is an equally valuable result.

What makes all of this possible is that the new system measures exactly the same five numbers you measured by hand. If its reports do not give them, you will not be able to compare and you go back to depending on someone else’s case (Reports).

What you can take from other hotels

None of the above means other people’s experience is useless. It is useful, but as a source of questions and not of figures. From a hotel similar to yours you can take what they measured, which leaks they found first, how long their team took to adopt verified room charge and what mistake they made in the first close. All of those are questions you can put to your own baseline.

What you cannot take is the result. “Up so many percent” does not travel from one hotel to another. The only figure that describes you is the one that comes out of your front desk, your point of sale and your close, with your guests and your agreements. That is the one worth defending in a meeting with the owner, because nobody can tell you it came from somewhere else.

What to do this week

1. Write the definition of the five numbers of your baseline, with the source of each figure and who captures it.
2. Prepare a one-month sheet with a row per day and a column per number, plus a “missing data” column.
3. Ask the front desk for occupied room nights with the same cut-off date the hotel restaurant uses.
4. Agree with the team that for thirty days no menu, hours or system will change, so the picture is clean.
5. When done, write the baseline on a separate sheet and decide which of the five numbers you will move first.

Inn Restaurant reports exactly those five numbers, by revenue center and with the charge tied to the folio, so the comparison against your baseline is direct. If you want to see how they look on screen with test data, book a 15-minute demo (contact).