For years, hotel performance has revolved around top-line metrics like RevPAR or ADR . But here’s the truth: these numbers only tell half the story. You can fill your rooms, hit record ADRs, and still watch your profit margins quietly erode.
NB: This is an article from Juyo Analytics, one of our Expert Partners
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While hotel leaders have been monitoring top and bottom lines for decades, the specific factors influencing either – or both – often remain unknown, unmonitored, and unmanaged at the property level.
Rising costs, complex distribution, and shifting market dynamics are forcing the industry into a total rethink, where the conversation shifts from “What did we make?” to “What did we keep?”
Welcome to the age of Net Revenue.
Hotel Revenue ≠ Hotel Profit
Maintaining a hotel P&L has never been more challenging. Rising OTA commissions, operational costs, labour shortages, and ever-growing marketing spend mean every booking carries a price tag.
A guest booking directly and one coming via a high-commission OTA might both boost your RevPAR, but their net contribution to profit can be worlds apart.
Let’s see it in an example:
Imagine a bustling hotel. A group booking rolls in, filling dozens of rooms. Simultaneously, individual travellers click “confirm” on your website. On paper, both look like wins. But the real question is: which one is actually more profitable?
That answer isn’t always intuitive.
Maybe the group comes in at a slightly lower rate but with lower acquisition costs and steady F&B or meeting-space revenue. Or perhaps the transient bookings arrive at higher ADRs but through high-commission OTAs – yet those same travellers might spend more on parking, spa, or upsells. Should you accept the group and risk displacing transient demand? Or is the transient mix less profitable than it appears once costs are mapped?
The Net Revenue Module unmasks the truth by showing, side-by-side, which bookings are likely to drive higher ancillary revenue, which come with higher or lower acquisition costs, and which combinations deliver the strongest overall profitability across dimensions such as channel, segment, room type, geography, and more.
From RevPAR to NetRevPAR
NetRevPAR, channel yield, and other net revenue metrics offer a more truthful view by factoring in the cost of acquisition and operational expenses.
But the real difference it’s in how these metrics are analysed and applied across cohorts and dimensions that inform real action.
When hotel leaders break these metrics down by segment, channel, market, or source, patterns are spotted that directly influence pricing, distribution, and marketing decisions.
This shift isn’t a temporary trend, it’s an industry shift driven by three unstoppable forces:
