payroll
Hospitality Financial Leadership: The Early Arrival Program
November 7, 2022
By David Lund With my workshops and speaking I often do an exercise where I challenge each leader to find a minimum of $250 in next month’s forecast that can be savings in the form of reduced payroll or expenses. It can also be a source of new revenue. The participants come up with some amazing ideas that really work. The great thing about these ideas is that we almost always get to repeat and compound. An idea that works next month works EVERY month. Read more about creating asset value here. In this piece I am going to share one of the best revenue-generating and guest-pleasing ideas that my clients have come up with. It’s someth...
How to Control Payroll for Better Profit
HotStats | February 24, 2020
For hoteliers and investors, it’s easy to be dazzled by revenue numbers. Unfortunately, when labor costs jump, revenue can quickly disintegrate. This is why getting a grasp on payroll data is at the heart of driving profit. Rising labor costs have put a fright into even the most seasoned of hoteliers. And there's reason for concern: Not accounting for payroll can eviscerate profit. Consider how U.S. hotels performed in the third quarter last year. Total revenue (TRevPAR) jumped across the board, but had trouble filtering down to the bottom line. Why? Hotels were hit by a 3.7% year-over-year increase in labor costs. The good n...
Hospitality Financial Leadership – Igniting Your Financials by Putting Hours of Work in Your P&L
David Lund | September 4, 2018
By David Lund In hospitality we all know that payroll is by far the largest expense and therefore it has the biggest negative impact on profitability. Turn this around and know that finding ways to be more efficient with payroll can have a big impact on labor costs and a positive impact on your hotel's bottom line. If you don't have hours of work in your monthly P&L, you are missing a massive opportunity to better understand payroll and productivity leading to ways to manage your business better. You know what they say, you can't manage what you can't measure. Putting hours of labor into your financial statements is just good housek...
Contract and Non-Management Employee Payrolls Rise in 2017
Robert Mandelbaum | August 20, 2018
By Robert Mandelbaum As the pace of revenue growth continues to decelerate for U.S. hotels, the capability of hotel operators to control costs will determine the ability of a property to increase profits from year to year. According to the 2018 edition of Trends® in the Hotel Industry, total operating revenue increased by just 2.0 percent in 2017 for the average hotel in the survey sample. Fortunately, by limiting the growth in operating expenses to 1.9 percent, managers at the Trends® properties realized an increase in gross operating profits (GOP) for the year. Unlike 2016, it was non-labor related costs that were the primary ...
Hospitality Financial Leadership – Who Has ALL the Risk and Why?
David Lund | March 5, 2018
By David Lund In the hotel business, we have lots of stakeholders: brands, managers, executives, and owners. But one has by far the biggest risk. The risk in this sense is holding a large hand of cards and the game is suddenly over and you must cash out all of those face cards and tens. What happens in the hotel business when the phones stop ringing? Who must pay the piper? It has been seven great years in most markets in North America that the hotel sector has been strong and growing year over year. Some markets have produced several years of strong single and even double-digit RevPAR growth. With the great RevPAR growth comes solid pr...
