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its RevPAR with a rate-led approach that, subsequently, requires less staffing. Taken further, if the former hotel relied more on OTAs than direct bookings to fill its rooms, it faces further margin compression, while the hotel that fills its rooms via direct channels attains better flow through, or how much of each dollar gained on the top line makes its way to the bottom line.
Shifting to a profit-focused strategy requires buy-in from every level of a hotel, Zoghlin offered, aligning teams on the same goals— from marketing and sales to distribution and revenue management.“ You need to communicate and break down those siloes,” he said.“ Teams must be confident in the new metrics that they use, that they’ re tracking and understand the impact that each of them has.” He calls it“ performance engineering.”
IN PRACTICE Duetto is fast down the profitability path. It’ s not alone. Bangkok-based Minor Hotels, an owner and operator of hotels, with brands including Anantara and NH Hotels, has bought into a profit strategy to drive its hotels’ performance, moving away from room-only KPI consideration to total revenue and total profitability, with net RevPAR as a truer measure of success, said Irene Villafranca, VP of commercial strategy and systems at Minor Hotels Europe & Americas.
The Sandman Hotel Group is leveraging data to help drive profitability,
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Alex Zoghlin, CEO of Duetto, was hired last June.
said its senior director of revenue management and distribution, Michael McNames.“ Technology allows for instantaneous results in profitability,” he said. Consider Duetto’ s GameChanger tool, which prices rooms based on the value of each booking and sets rates based on room type, booking channel and customer segment. Meanwhile, HotStats allows hotels to benchmark their P & L to competitor sets.
Chris Cylke, president and COO of asset manager REVPAR International, is the first to recognize the preeminence of benchmarking profitability. Still, for an industry that has been a poster child for slow adoption to technology, getting to a profit-first mentality takes time.“ Certain companies are taking key initiatives and integrating profit services, but some brands and management companies are
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dragging behind,” said Cylke.
The case for getting to better profitability stems from, first, deriving better revenue. Because, as Cylke suggested, not all revenue is created equal. It also comes from a full review and grasp of expenses.“ It’ s about understanding costs and actioning on it from a pricing strategy,” said Katie Moro, VP of data partnerships, hospitality at Amadeus. She added that the expectation is for more hotels to also move to attribute-based selling, a hospitality strategy that unbundles hotel rooms into individual components, allowing guests to customize their stay by selecting specific features, such as a high floor, balcony, or specific view— rather than booking a pre-defined room category.
“ Driving profitability is all about data and how to get in the right tools,” added
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Moro. Amadeus Demand360, for instance, provides data on future hotel occupancy, traveler segmentation and benchmarking. Amadeus Agency360 is a travel intelligence solution that offers hoteliers insights into agent bookings across GDS, OTA and direct channels.
Growing revenue is the first step toward ensuring profitability, which is why there has been such a premium of late on the role of chief commercial officer. Teams aligned to deliver revenue matter, but just as important is being aligned on the bottom line— the commercial team, the finance team, the operations team, to“ find the optimal flow that generates profit,” Cylke said.
It’ s not easy; it takes time; it’ s paramount.“ Ultimately,” he said,“ the hotel owner takes the bottom line to the bank.”
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70 hotelsmag. com May / June 2026 |