Hotel Expenses

Food cost is a never-ending battle in a war that does not end. You can never take your foot off the gas, if you do you will slow down. When you slow down in the food cost world it is costly. Back in the day I cut my teeth as a receiver,…

 

What is really important to realize is the food cost calculation in your hotel will always come back to the cost of goods formula. Any attempt to track and individualize the outlet food cost that I have ever seen is a big waste of time. It is a waste of time because it always comes back to the…

In our business it is no secret that labor is our single biggest expense. Last year the average hotel in North America, according to data collected from thousands of medium- and full-service hotels by a popular industry partner, was right around 50 percent of total revenues.

What is a secret is how most hotels manage their largest cost. In…

When it comes to payroll we are not just paying the cash wages. We have additional dollars that are substantial in the form of supplemental costs and employee benefits.

So, what we want to have are three areas we can see and analyze in our financial statements:

1. Cash wages
2. Auxiliary wage costs – “supplemental”
3. Employee benefits

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In my recent travels working with clients and delivering keynotes as well as financial leadership workshops for management teams and hotel associations, I noticed an interesting way that more than one client used to “subsidize” their meetings—reducing their costs—and I wanted to share it with you.

Having your regional meeting, national meeting…

I help hotels manage their profits more efficiently and in the hospitality world, there are only two main cost types that need a system and a strategy to properly control them. The two culprits are payroll and expenses. In this piece, I am going to talk about expenses, namely a process for…