robert mandelbaum
The Lag in Food and Beverage Recovery
Robert Mandelbaum | December 12, 2022
By Robert Mandelbaum, Andrew Hartley According to CBRE’s September 2022 Hotel Horizons® forecast for the overall U.S. lodging industry, rooms revenue per-available-room (RevPAR) will exceed 2019 annual levels in 2022. This is driven by the accelerated recovery of average daily rate (ADR) which first occurred during the third quarter of 2021. Unfortunately for the owners and operators of full-service, convention, and resort hotels, food and beverage (F&B) revenue is lagging in recovery and yet to return to pre-COVID levels. This can be attributed to a combination of the following factors: Health regulations The lag in ...
Controlling U.S. Hotel Utility Costs
Robert Mandelbaum | November 10, 2022
By Robert Mandelbaum and Ethan Gabany Annual changes in U.S. hotel utility costs and in the Consumer Price Index (CPI), or inflation, have historically proven to be strongly correlated. As of August 2022, CBRE is forecasting CPI growth to be 7.7 percent in 2022, followed by another 3.6 percent in 2023. Since inflation has averaged just 2.2 percent since 2000, these inflation projections have hoteliers concerned about operating costs. Given that rising energy costs are a significant driver of the current rise in CPI, hotel managers are especially worried about utility department expenses. Over the past 50 years, utility department expens...
Quantifying the Franchise Relationship During COVID-19
Robert Mandelbaum | August 8, 2022
By Robert Mandelbaum In 2020, the average hotel in CBRE’s annual Trends® in the Hotel Industry survey experienced a 108 percent decline in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), resulting in an EBITDA margin of -5.5 percent. For hotels, EBITDA represents the cash flows from operations that are used to fund debt service and provide returns to investors. This is by far the greatest decline in EBITDA since CBRE began tracking the performance of the U.S. lodging industry in the 1930s. Facing such traumatic declines in profitability and insolvency, hotel owners reached out to their lenders, investors...
Information and Telecommunications Costs
Robert Mandelbaum | June 27, 2022
By Robert Mandelbaum and Adam Barry Just as technology has become more ubiquitous throughout our lives, it is now impacting guest service and hotel operations throughout all departments in a hotel. To provide more exposure to the growing costs associated with hotel information and technology systems, the 11th edition of the Uniform System of Account for the Lodging Industry added a discrete undistributed department to capture these expenses. Prior to the 11th edition the costs for phone and internet service, payroll for telephone operators and computer technicians, and charges related to information systems were allocated to multiple depar...
Hotel Property Taxes – An Opportunity to Cut a Cost
Robert Mandelbaum | May 26, 2022
By Robert Mandelbaum and Mark Whitney According to the March 2022 edition of CBRE’s Hotel Horizons® national forecast report, the total revenue for a typical U.S. hotel is not expected to return to pre-COVID 2019 nominal dollars until 2023. Accordingly, hotel owners and operators continue to seek ways to control expenses. One potential reduction opportunity is property taxes. Based on a sample of 3,400 hotels from CBRE’s Trends® in the Hotel Industry database, U.S. hotel property tax expenditures declined by 13.0% from 2020 to 2021. This decline put 2021 property taxes 9.9% below 2019 levels. Unfortunately, this compares u...
Hotel Insurance – A Largely Uncontrollable Cost
Robert Mandelbaum | April 19, 2022
To analyze recent changes in hotel insurance costs, and the factors that influence those changes, we examined the operating statements of 3,156 U.S. hotels that reported insurance expenses for the Trends® survey each year from 2015 through 2021 (estimated). By Robert Mandelbaum & Tom Cleary In 2020 and 2021, U.S. hotel operators did a praiseworthy job controlling expenses to offset the significant declines in revenue. Based on data from CBRE’s Trends® in the Hotel Industry survey of annual operating statements from thousands of properties across the U.S., not only have we seen a reduction in the variable expenses associated wi...
Investing in Training Hotel Employees
Robert Mandelbaum | February 1, 2022
By Robert Mandelbaum Given the challenges U.S. hotels are having attracting and retaining employees, the need to invest in employee training is as great as it has ever been. Unfortunately, training expenditures, like all operating expenses, have been subject to major cuts in response to the extremely reduced levels of revenue incurred during 2020 and 2021. Labor is the single biggest expense within a hotel. In 2019, before COVID-19, the average property in our Trends® in the Hotel Industry survey sample spent 31.3 percent of its total revenue, or 42.4 percent of its total expenses, on labor costs. This includes the salaries, wages, ...
Hotels Owners Interested in Interest
Robert Mandelbaum | October 1, 2021
By Robert Mandelbaum, Mark K. Owens The decline in the operating performance of U.S. hotels during 2020 has been well documented. According to the results of CBRE’s 2021 edition of Trends® in the Hotel Industry, total operating revenue during the year declined by 62.2 percent, which resulted in an 82.6 percent drop in gross operating profits (GOP). Similar to the decline in total operating revenues, the 30-day average annual LIBOR rate declined by 68.9 percent. 30-day LIBOR is historically the benchmark rate used by lenders for floating-rate loans, which are a preferred loan type of most institutional hospitality investors. Dec...
1
Technology
2
Operations
3
Market Reports
4
Industry Happenings
5
All Things Independent
Today's News
Hotel Trouvail Miami Beach Inducted Into Historic Hotels of America
Amir Nematipour Appointed Director of Food and Beverage at Four Seasons Resort Lanai
Almost Half of Global Hotel Markets Recovered RevPAR With Challenging 2023 Ahead
STR: U.S. Hotel Results for Week Ending 21 January
As the first news aggregate for the hotel industry, Hotel-Online is the industry’s must-read daily news source for everything hotel curated for busy professionals. Sign up today for industry news delivered to your inbox.