Briefly describe how STR obtains raw property data.
STR obtains raw property data by directly receiving it from the hotel companies’ systems. The monthly or daily data can also be entered by hotel representative directly on the STR website (Smith Travel Research, 2013).
Identify the various metrics used by the hotel industry, both the raw values, the KPIs, and the Percent Changes.
The hotel industry uses different metrics. The basic kind of metrics is raw values. There are three main types of raw data: supply (which means the number of rooms available), demand (meaning the number of rooms sold) and revenue (total revenue amount, which is generated via rooms selling).
As for key performance indicators (KPIs), the hotels use three main metrics: occupancy (shows, which part of the rooms were sold within a given period of time), average daily rate (an average rate, which is paid by the client for the room) and revenue per available room (indicates the revenue obtained by the hotel as a whole recalculated in terms of each available room).
Finally, percent change means comparing the current period indicator with the previous period indicator. It shows the growth rate from the previous period (Smith Travel Research, 2013).
Explain how metrics are calculated when it comes to multiple time periods.
In order to calculate change between multiple time periods metrics, the previous period indicator should be divided from the current period indicator. The obtained difference should be divided by the previous period indicator. In order to convert the result to percentage, it should be additionally multiplied by 100 (Smith Travel Research, 2013).
Compare the differences between how monthly and daily data is treated.
The formulas used for calculation of daily and monthly KPIs are just the same. But the date fields are different, which should be taken into consideration.
Monthly percent changes are always used to compare the current month indicator to the indicator of the same month a year ago. And the daily percent change is calculated basing on “comparable days” (the days with the same day of week) (Smith Travel Research, 2013).
Identify “hints” that should be remembered when working with the various metrics.
There are different hints for processing monthly and daily multiple time periods data. As for monthly data, current month data just shows the performance of the current month, while 3-month numbers and 12-months numbers indicate performance trends relating to longer periods of time.
The numbers calculated for a particular day show the performance of this given day and the weekly numbers indicate the performance for the period of seven days. Ultimately, the Month-to-Date approach reveals the performance throughout the whole month (Smith Travel Research, 2013).
References
Smith Travel Research (2013). Hotel Math Fundamentals, the Metrics used by the Hotel Industry [PowerPoint slides].
