Ok #HotelTwit, let’s talk benchmarking! We’ll look at each department from the Summary P+L and talk about how we compare it to like hotels, and why. This’ll get us to be able to do a “quick & dirty” proforma, which we’ll do for a real hotel next week
Quick reminder – you can find the Glossary of Terms in the thread below. I’ve added a few things since the launch as well
Occ & ADR – These are easy! We compare them as-is… the key is to identify the most competitive and most comparable local hotels. We’ll talk about how I project Occ & ADR in a future thread. BTW – This covers Rooms Revenue also
Now let’s talk F&B revenue. IF we’re talking a limited-service or select-service hotels, I’ll tend to do a simple POR calculation. The logic being that guests of the hotel are your F&B customers, so it’s an easy metric – “how much revenue do I generate on a per guest basis?”
If we’re talking Full Service / Luxury, it’s a LOT harder. There I try and do a buildup of banquet revenue (on a revenue PSF basis), outlet revenue (on a per seat or PSF basis), and minibar / room service (POR), even for a quick & dirty
For other stand-alone departments, it’ll depend on the usage. Spa I’d look at as revenue per treatment room. Parking I tend to think about as capture rate based, which is essentially POR
Other Operated Departments is generally small stuff, so again I’ll go POR. Same with Miscellaneous Income, unless I have a Resort / Facility Fee or a material Lease to factor in
On to Expenses! Rooms is a POR comp. Most rooms expenses – from staffing (housekeeping, front desk) to consumables (cleaning supplies, etc.) – are based on guest load. Rooms is mostly, though not completely, a variable cost of occupancy
F&B is a % of Revenue comp. The components aren’t easy to pigeonhole – cost of goods sold is look at as a % of sales, but isn’t necessarily driven that way, staffing is a function of demand with a high minimum load, etc. It’s a cop-out, but % of Revenue is the way to go
Parking, Spa, Similar Departments and Other Operated Departments are best comped on a % of Revenue basis. Similar to F&B, the drivers are more complicated, and you’ll end up building a proforma just for the larger businesses and the smaller ones frankly won’t matter
Miscellaneous Income is my favorite. The comp is % of Revenue, and the Expense load is 0%
On to the Undistributed Expenses…
Admin & General. The cost to oversee the operations a 120 room upscale select service hotel is essentially the same whether it’s 50% or 100% occupied. The exception in A&G is Credit Card Commissions, so you might want to break that out even in your back-of-napkin analysis
If so, it’s a % of Revenue for Credit Card Commissions and PAR for the rest
Info & Telecom. Similar to Admin & General, the cost is the cost, so it’s a PAR calculation.
Sales & Marketing. While the cost is the cost, Franchise Fees are included here and make up a substantial portion of the total department. So, I like to break those out, going PAR for Sales & Marketing and calculating the Franchise Fees on revenue
Property Ops & Maintenance. Again, the cost is the cost, though wear & tear happens more with occupancy. I tend to do PAR, but bump it up a touch in a high occupancy situation
Utilities. Utility usage varies with occupancy but has a floor of “how much do we need to keep the place from freezing / melting”. Here, I’ll go POR, but bump it a bit if we’re talking a lower occupancy situation
Management Fee. This will have 2 components, the Base Management Fee and the Incentive Management Fee. For basic benchmarking I ignore the Incentive and only look at base. This is almost always calculated as a % of Revenue, sometimes including a floor, so that’s how I look at it
Non-Operating. The most obvious of these (property taxes, insurance, ground rent) are all a PAR comparable. Less frequent things, like equipment leases or lease income, are harder to have a general rule for and need to be addressed case-by-case
EBITDA. I like to look at both % of Revenue (EBITDA Margin) and PAR (EBITDA per key). Both are pretty good benchmarks to look at for a 30 second analysis. “Is the EBITDA Margin way out-of-whack?” and “Is EBITDA per key way out-of-whack?” are good Q’s to ask
Replacement Reserve. Always done as a % of Revenue. Boom.
Net Operating Income. Same as EBITDA. NOI Margin and NOI per key. Same reasons.
Now that we’ve been through that, we’ll look at a real hotel next week and apply it, with a goal of saying “can I get close enough to the ask?”
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How should you select a third-party management company for your hotel? A (hopefully useful) thread:
First. If you’re buying or building a hotel with any scale, and you don’t have operational experience, you should (and in many cases, will need to) hire a third-party operator. Doing it yourself will be painful and expensive
You could ask me to do it (yes, we do this sometimes), but I’m not here to sell you things & would rather recommend a few groups I know are strong & professional w/ good track records that you could independently evaluate
I’ve owed you all the next benchmarking thread for a while… here we go!
Now that we’ve been through benchmarking, let’s look at a “live” example of a hotel deal – how would I use this to see if a deal is worth chasing? Thanks to a member of the #ReTwit crew for offering up a hotel – I’ve anonymized so it shouldn’t be recognizable.
First let’s take a look at performance in 2019 and 2020. Worth noting – the hotel underwent an addition in 2019, so it’s a particularly tough historical data set to use! Also, some funky project-specific things we’ll ignore for now (e.g., no property taxes) to protect anonymity
Next up in the #HotelTwit series is an intro to the P+L!
Every operating co has their own format, so I’ll show you a representative example (with no #s) and also an example of how I like to look at it (with fake #s)
Going to focus today on the Summary, and will get into departmental levels in the future
Meet the summary P+L! This shows - on the left side - the monthly performance for the month run, against both budget and prior year - and on the right side - the YTD version of the same!
Going to kick of #HotelTwit with a running glossary of terms. I’ll keep adding as we go, and keep pinned on my profile. If you have requests for add’l terms, just drop ‘em in the thread!
Occ:
Occupancy. The percent of room s occupied in any stated time period. Occupied Room Nights ➗ Available Room Nights
ADR:
Average Daily Rate (sometimes, just Rate). The average rate charged for occupied room nights in any stated time period. Gross Rooms Revenue ➗ Occupied Room Nights