hospitality financial leadership

Hospitality Financial Leadership: Journey “Don’t Stop Believin”

David Lund | June 3, 2019

By David Lund What does your hospitality career and the band Journey have in common? Lots. How I met the band and how you can get what you want in life if you're willing to work hard, never give up and most importantly "repeat" never give up and work hard. Journey first got together in 1973 in San Francisco. The band didn't really have any commercial success until 1978 and the real results came together in 1981 with their seventh album Escape. Steve Perry was the band's vocalist as of 1977 and the group saw a lot of success in the early 80's and mixed results well into the 90's. Steve's voice and the band's power sound became the anthem...

Hospitality Financial Leadership: Benchmarking and Key Business Indicators

David Lund | May 28, 2019

By David Lund This thing in the title of this piece, I want to say was a fad that died already. Benchmarking and KBI's were all the rage a decade ago and now, today, you don't hear much at all about their usefulness or how to create them. There is a good reason they have fallen out of sight in the hospitality industry – read on to find out why. In a former corporate life, I was the author of a quarterly exposé of benchmarking for approximately 50 different measurements for about the same number of hotels. I thought the information was revealing and it created a path forward for "continuous improvement." In this piece I am g...

Hospitality Financial Leadership: What Do Indy Car Racing and the Hotel Business Have in Common?

David Lund | May 20, 2019

By David Lund I am a big fan of professional car racing. I follow the major series; Formula One, NASCAR and my favorite times 10 is Indy Car. When I think about what I like so much around the Indy Car Series there is a parallel to the hotel business that I think needs to be exposed so people will have a better understanding of why Indy Car is so special and how being successful in the hotel business is kind of the same. You might think I'm stretching things here just a little, but I promise you I'm not. Indy Car, in my opinion, is the purest form of auto racing on the planet because you need to be multi-disciplined as a driver. It is un...

Hospitality Financial Leadership: Engage Their Hearts and Minds First

David Lund | May 13, 2019

By David Lund Getting your hotel leadership team excited about accounting is like someone thinking it's fun to go to the dentist. Your average person wants nothing to do with it because they have a predisposed notion that it's yucky, boring and better left for someone who has a hard time walking and talking at the same time. What I have learned about getting your average hotel leader excited about the numbers is just the opposite. Let me explain. Hotel leaders ALL want to have the "financial where-with-all" to dazzle their peers. They know it's the secret sauce to propel their career. They all want their seat at the captain's table. Bei...

Hospitality Financial Leadership: The Financial Forecast Disconnect and How to Correct It

David Lund | May 6, 2019

By David Lund When I work with hotel clients around their financial leadership it's often centered on getting the team to do their monthly financial forecast. A greater interest in doing it produces better and more consistent results. When doing financial leadership workshops and individual coaching, I inevitably discover the same thing time and time again. It's the disconnect between the executive team/director of finance part of the operation and the department line managers. In this piece I am going to explain why this disconnect exists, how to detect it and what you can do to fix it. First, why the disconnect exists. It exists becau...

Hospitality Financial Leadership: Investing in Financial Leadership in Your Hotel

David Lund | April 29, 2019

By David Lund CFO to CEO: "What happens if we invest in developing people and they leave?" CEO: "What happens if we don't and they stay?" I found this exchange in, of all places, the internet. Go figure. It's an interesting back and forth that I know plays out in many organizations. Investing in anything training related in business is tricky. Not only when it comes to the money and resources it takes, but it's also the matter of finding the appropriate training. I also believe one of the biggest stumbling blocks to creating and investing in a culture where we train and develop our leaders continually, is the ability to have it result i...

Hospitality Financial Leadership: Negative Flow Thru

David Lund | April 22, 2019

By David Lund One of the most read articles I have written is on the topic of flow thru and how to use it in your financial statements. Understanding flow thru is not something that comes easily to most people immediately, but once you look at it and do the calculation it usually clicks. Once it drops in place you have got it for good. To take things one step further in this piece I am going to discuss negative flow thru. Negative flow thru or retention is something that most people in North America have not had to deal with very much in the past decade. We have just crossed over a massive stretch of growth in our industry that was mark...

Hospitality Financial Leadership: Nobody Gets to Be Wrong, Everyone is Wrong, No One Gets to Be Right, Everyone is Right

David Lund | April 15, 2019

By David Lund I use this quote to start many of my workshops. To me it's the way I want the participants to stand in their individual power during our time together. It's also how I see our industry. In the hotel business we all need to have an opinion and even more important we need to be able to share those thoughts. Reason being is, we all have something important to bring to the table. That's what I tell my workshop participants. To illustrate this, I often ask the following question. "What would you rather have to increase your GOP in your 300-room hotel that is currently operating at 75% occupancy with a $150 average rate, a $4 ro...