Opening a restaurant or café means running a construction project, a hiring campaign and a menu launch at the same time, usually with less cash than planned. A dated checklist, counted back from opening night, keeps the three moving together. Before...

A group enquiry for 40 rooms looks like good news. Whether it is depends on what those rooms would have earned without the group. Displacement analysis compares the two before you quote. The question displacement answers If you accept the group, whi...

Most guest complaints are won or lost in the first few minutes, at the front desk or on the phone. The guest does not care who is allowed to approve a free night. They care that the person in front of them can fix the problem now. Give every level a...

A hotel budget is a forecast of rooms, revenue and costs, month by month, that the owner can hold management to. The strongest budgets are built from operating drivers such as occupancy, average rate and covers, not from last year's totals plus a pe...

One rental is easy to clean between guests. Six rentals with same-day check-outs and check-ins, two cleaners and a weekend full of short stays is a scheduling problem. The hosts who handle it well plan from the booking calendar, not from the cleaner...

Hotel openings rarely slip because of the building alone. They slip because a licence was applied for late, a system interface was installed but never tested, or the team was hired too late to be trained. A pre-opening critical path puts every one o...

A room inspection is the last check before a guest opens the door. Done well, it catches the hair on the bathroom floor and the dead remote battery. Done badly, it is a signature on a form. The difference is a fixed route through the room, a short l...

Food cost percentage tells you how much of every dollar of food sales went on the food itself. It is the first number an owner asks about when margins slip, and the one most kitchens calculate wrongly, usually because the inventory count is skipped....