�Benchmarker® � Compares a Hotel�s Performance to a Group of Comparable Properties; Shows Owners, Managers, and Lenders How their Hotel �Stacks Up� Against Competition

�Hotel owners and managers have used our annual Trends in the Hotel Industry for years to compare their hotels to similar properties in all U.S. submarkets.  Now they can get customized reports from our large data warehouse of full financial statements that allow them to go several steps further in their analysis,� Corgel said.

The Benchmarker program lets hoteliers select a group of hotels comparable to their property and receive a customized report from the Trends database of U.S. hotels.  PKF Consulting and HRG keep a database of financial records from thousands of hotels across the U.S., and have done so since 1935. 

�This is information the industry really needs,� said Claude Vargo, Senior Project Manager � Benchmarker for HRG.  �Profit growth in the hotel industry depends on management�s recognition of opportunities to maximize revenues and minimize expenses.  Unfortunately, management may have difficulty determining how competitors and comparable properties perform.  Thus, they miss the chance to fully understand the extent of market opportunities and the effectiveness of their own management practices,� he explained.

Already in full swing, Benchmarker® has garnered a significant number of highly satisfied users who are receiving deeply discounted prices because of their willingness to share financial data with HRG, according to Vargo.

�Using Benchmarker for comparing the performance of our hotels to similar ones throughout the industry helps us quantify our relative strengths and weaknesses, so that we can continue to make incremental improvements,� said Mitesh B. Shah, Executive Vice President for Noble Investment Group.

Three standard reports are available to Benchmarker customers.

1. Income Statement � provides a consolidation of the revenues and expenses for major departments.

2. Departmental Statements  - reports detailing revenues and expenses for the following hotel departments

• Rooms
• Food and Beverage
• Telecommunications
• Administrative & General
• Marketing
• Property Maintenance & Utilities

Benchmarker allows the selected comparable group to contain as many, or as few, criteria as desired.

• Property type � full-service, limited-service, convention hotel, etc.
• Range of rooms -100-199, 200-299, etc.
• Geographical area � city, state, or U.S. region
• Location � city center, suburban, highway, airport, etc.
• Affiliation � chain or independent
• Plus, ranges of occupancy and average daily rate (ADR)

�Confidentiality of our sources has been the key to our relationships with our contributors since 1935,� said Corgel.  �All Benchmarker comparables are given in aggregate, and no individual property�s statistics are ever identified.  The Industry understands this, and it�s never become an issue; nevertheless, we always want to be clear about the inviolability of our contributors� data,� he explained.

The Hospitality Research Group (HRG) is the research affiliate of PKF Consulting, the international consulting and real estate firm specializing in the hospitality industry.  HRG, along with PKF Consulting and hotel brokerage affiliate Hospitality Asset Advisors Incorporated are all wholly owned subsidiaries of Hospitality Asset Advisors International, a U.S. Corporation.  HAA International has offices in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Singapore.