If you’re like most General Managers, you’ve built a successful career by balancing three things: the brand standards from HQ, your decades of hard-won experience, and that invaluable gut feeling for the art of hospitality. For years, this “three-legged stool” has been more than enough to manage your team, handle crises, and keep guests happy.
NB: This is an article from Demand Calendar
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But in today’s hyper-dynamic market, that stool is starting to feel wobbly. The problem is that your manuals, your experience, and even your gut are primarily reactive. They’re fantastic for telling you what happened, but they can’t always tell you why it happened or what to do next.
This is where data comes in. But let’s be clear: this isn’t about trading in your GM instincts to become a data scientist. This is about learning to ask a few new, powerful questions – questions your experience and manuals can’t answer, but your data can. This is how you supercharge your gut feeling with proof.
The Questions Your Manual Can’t Answer
The key to becoming data-driven isn’t building a massive dashboard; it’s learning to reframe your questions. Your experience gives you the broad “gut-feel” questions. Your data helps you ask sharper, more specific questions that drive real action. Let’s look at five examples.
1. The “Competitive Rate” vs. The “Truly Profitable Guest”
Your gut asks: “Are our weekend rates competitive?”
Your data asks: “What is the true profitability of my ‘discounted-package’ guest vs. my ‘full-rate’ transient guest?”
Think about it. The guest who books your “Bed & Breakfast” package looks great on paper – they fill a room. But what if your data showed that when you factor in their F&B spend, spa usage, and the exact housekeeping cost for that room type, you’re actually losing money on that guest compared to the transient guest who paid $30 more but spent $150 at the bar? Your data can tell you which guest types and rate codes actually contribute to your bottom line, not just your occupancy report.
