Hotel and tourism management has various processes that allow businesses to operate successfully. One fundamental process for efficient operation is the daily control of a hotel. This set of actions provides a panoramic, grounded and timely view of the status of your accommodation. We tell you everything you need to do it correctly.
What does daily monitoring of a hotel consist of?
The nature of the hospitality business means that there are a large number of actions and processes that occur every day and 24 hours a day. This particular aspect of hospitality makes it necessary to constantly know the full picture of the business in order to manage it properly.
This is what daily hotel control is all about. This process encompasses numerous actions that account for the state of the business throughout the day. In particular, a critical part of this control is the compilation of the day’s operations and the comparison of customer-related transactions with the transactions made in each area of the hotel.
This monitoring is often done during nighttime hours for a variety of reasons. Typically, during these hours, the administrative staff needs to respond to fewer guest requests. Also, guest check-in and check-out times have already passed, which gives a more stable picture of the hotel’s status in real time.
Additionally, it is common to review reports generated by hotel technology tools until the end of the day. That is, when the system strikes midnight.
Common tasks for daily hotel control
So, when thinking about how to manage a hotel, daily monitoring is certainly an element that cannot be missed. The core tasks that are usually included in this review are:
- Evaluate the hotel’s financial activities for that day.
- Reconcile guest payments.
- Reconcile closing reports of receiving boxes.
- Prepare invoices for the next day’s departures.
- Check availability and reserve rooms for the next day.
- Prepare the sales consolidation together with a report of management indicators such as ADR, RevPAR, length of stay, etc. on a daily basis.
- Control of daily expenses and their respective validations.
Vital elements for daily control of a hotel
With these global tasks in mind, let’s review what is specifically needed for the daily control of a hotel to be effective and truly contribute to the correct management of a business.
Daily report
This report shows the revenue information for the day that just ended. The key thing about this report is that it compares that data to data from other periods. For example, a month or a year ago. It can also compare it to what is stipulated in the business budget.
In this way, the daily report allows to measure and monitor the performance of the accommodation.
Income Report
This relates to the daily report. It is revenue data associated with hotel movements such as guest arrivals, absences and cancellations. Therefore, it should include information from the hotel’s various distribution channels such as its own booking engine and OTAs ( online travel agencies ).
Room report and/or forecast
This is essential information for building a picture of the health of a hotel. It includes occupancy levels and availability over the next few days. It also includes data on check-ins, check-outs, no-shows associated with reservations and cancellations.
Tax Report
Collects tax information on income from bookings and other sources. This is the case of service taxes (VAT, ICO), for example.
Cash report
This is a detailed list of the cash activity in the different rooms or areas within the hotel. It covers cash inflows and outflows and credit card transactions or other forms of payment created by the hotel.
Expense report
It consists of data related to cash receipts and withdrawals and purchases made by the property for its daily operation.
Other elements to consider
While the above are the essential components of a hotel’s daily control , there are others that can help in making fundamental and strategic decisions.
- The report is a list of statistical data about the occupancy of the day just passed. For example: available rooms, occupied rooms, sold rooms, standard rate, number of guests, number of no-shows, etc.
- The average rates report shows the rate applied to each room or guest as applicable, their differences from the standard rate and the income composition accordingly.
Importance of daily control of a hotel
As you can see, daily monitoring of a hotel is very important because it is the direct window to the financial movements of a hotel. Without it, the administrative staff of a hotel cannot know if the day has gone according to plan. In addition, they cannot estimate if the income behavior is as expected according to the business strategy.
Fortunately, hotel technology gives us a hand to make such an important process run smoothly. Today, a solid Property Management System (PMS) like LobbyPMS, created especially for medium and small properties, has the power to collect and manage the information needed to execute the daily control of a hotel.
