The Beechmont Beerware Hotel Development Index

This is something new that we got our guys started on, and got to thinking, we could work it into something useful that we could charge for. It's still a work in progress, so we use a 'beerware' pricing model (only charging real money for custom work)

Over time, we'll refine it. We're also going to add marketing data such as traffic and demand generators.

Thank you for your support.

Click here for the index.

Seth's Blog : Whose business are you minding?

Whose business are you minding?

Industries have rules. Rules and benefits.

Hollywood requires agents, casting calls, big budgets and content aimed at a certain part of a certain market. If you follow enough of the rules, the thinking goes, you get a multi-million dollar budget and the red carpet.
Broadway requires a certain length, certain compromises, certain deals. This creates scalpers and hangers on and small audiences filling small theaters. And, if you follow just enough of the rules, you might end up with Hamilton. Perhaps one in 10,000 pull this off.

Publishing requires a fealty to the book and to the bookstore, alliances with the right cultural forces and a willingness to create scarcity. If you're persistent and very, very good, you can get picked by the New Yorker and you get picked by Little, Brown and you end up with The Tipping Point. Perhaps one in 100,000 pull this off.

Outsiders who want in, who want to make their mark in movies or investment banking or in politics often decide that minding the business of their industry is the way to reach their goals. After all, it's the insiders that win the awards and get the benefits that go to people who are by and for their industry.

But what if instead of focusing on the industry, you focused on the change you seek to make? On the audience you seek to serve. On doing your customers' business, not the industry's...

It's not in any of the manuals, but the door is wide open, the path is far wider and you can start today.

      

Seth's Blog : Valuing hygiene factors

Valuing hygiene factors

A hygiene factor is something you miss when it's gone, but barely notice when it's there.

Clean sheets at a hotel, for example. The base salary at a job. Your title.

Every time you add one of these factors to consumer or employee expectation, you've signed up for a lifetime of providing that benefit. You've made it more difficult for the competition to keep up. And you've raised the standards for everyone.

They're important, but their presence doesn't motivate people. It's only when they disappear that we think about them.

       

8 Secrets to Learn from the Ritz-Carlton Marketing Strategy

From Digital Spark Marketing

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It's Not All About Millennials. Why Hotels Need to Focus on Older Singles & Families

From HotelSpaces

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How halal tourism is reshaping the global tourism industry

From e-hotelier

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What do you think of the following business name: ''Last Room Club'' for a business selling hotel rooms for the same day with significant discount?

It's as good a name as any for something that there's already dozens of out there, and that even hotel operators who deal with them deal with them at all only because they feel like they have to, lack enthusiasm for, and even resent a little. (Actually, I like the name better than many that I've seen for deep discount online travel agencies.)

As names go, worse can be had, I suppose. Most of the ones I can think of for deep discount OTAs aren't suitable for use in polite company.



A few things that drive us nuts:

We don't like dumping our rooms cheap because we can't find a way to rent them for a decent price. If we can afford not to, we won't. I'd rather let a few $140-per-night rooms stand empty than to rent them to people who, if I let them have it for $75 one time, will get spoiled and never again see them as worth more than $75. Letting you sell our $140 a night rooms for fifty bucks, and making it too easy for too many people to get them at that price, doesn't exactly enhance the perceived value of our product — why should anyone want to pay even a hundred bucks a night for something you can get for fifty bucks? And when we have to because we can't afford not to, it makes us sick. If you're just doing it because you need the money, you may be relieved to getthe money, but it still makes you feel like a loser.

Does Expedia match booking.com commission rates for when you guest pays at hotel?

Booking.com charges a flat 20% commission. Expedia is slightly higher, closer to 24 or 25%, and that varies by property. I think chains negotiate it in a lot of cases.

I don't suspect any collusion between the two, or attempt by either of them to get or keep their commission rates in any way in alignment with those of the other.



I've heard of the existence of some GDS channels who in negotiating with a hotel, will tell them, we want, say, $2,000 in commissions per year guaranteed, and paid to us up front before we even list your property. I've never had one try it with me, but the first time it happens, I'm going to tell somebody to pound sand. I ran a used bookstore and coffee shop years ago, dealt one time with a wholesale vendor that demanded 'minimum orders', quickly discovered Costco; and concluded that only a real wuss, an enabler, a codependent, a cherry having less than reasonable adult human resolve who's probably in at least one other abusive relationship, would even talk to such vendors rather than just hang up on them.

Hotwire operates on a different model altogether that isn't commission-based. They're more like a reseller. You make a certain number of rooms on each night, of various types, available to them at a lowball set price, and they resell them for whatever they can get -- which is usually at a markup -- then turn around and pay you the agreed-upon price as they pass the reservations along to you and the guests show up to check in.

Online travel agencies have been in existence as long as they have, are as lucrative to their stockholders as they are, and get away with what they do in terms of exorbitant commissions; because they discovered revenue management some time before the hotels themselves did. We were attached for far and away too long to assigning a 'shelf price' to our rooms, and too inflexibly sticking to it except for corporate and group rates negotiated by the individual hotel.

Originally appeared on Quora

Should hotels and accommodation providers get together to create their own booking portal?

Like Room Key? It’s been done already, and it’s a failure.

Room Key was launched by a consortium of hotel chains who wanted to light off a collective response to, and re-capture guest referrals from, online travel agencies like Expedia and Travelocity.

Only one teeny-weeny problem: the OTAs were already filling the demand for hotel room bookings via online travel agencies. Customers wanted to compare rates, and hotel features, at their destination side by side, and the online travel agencies were enabling that, and had first mover advantage, and the customers didn’t need Room Key in order to do it.

What is and why do hotels have a rack rate?

Sometimes, with all these 'entitlement' discounts, I wonder myself . . .

First of all, rack rate is not - at least not in the US - set by law. If some hotel clerk told you that, he or she either didn't like you, or just didn't want to give you any kind of discount. Every hotel sets its own rates - and its own exceptions to and discounts from those rates.

(Some localities require the hotel to post their rates, like on the inside of the door to your room, usually a scheme to thwart price gouging, or fraud by clerks. Where there is such a requirement, you'll see an astronomically high rate posted, in anticipation of the expected rate for the most high-demand special event in the area . . .)

Rack rate is the asking price for a room, the set price from which nearly all discounts are calculated.

How much? Well, certainly I want to cover my costs, make a profit, etc. - but it is strictly market driven. (Consider Hampton Inns, or Courtyard by Marriott. A room at a Hampton Inn, or a Courtyard, is going to come pretty much one way. But a king room at a Hampton Inn in one city can be priced very differently from a similar king room at a Hampton Inn in another, depending upon the local market. The same goes for Courtyard, and any chain that emphasizes product consistency and uniformity.) I'm going to set it at an amount comparable hotels are asking for comparable rooms. Set it lower, and I'm charging less than the guest might be willing to pay; set it higher, and unless my property has amenities and features for which the guest considers worth paying a little more, I'm going to lose business to the competing hotels.

And now, the discounts . . . You can pretty much figure that everyone who walks in the door has some rationale why he or she should receive a 10% discount from the rack rate.

Motorcoach service facilities

We like to have installed, in every town where we operate a hotel, facilities for servicing motorcoaches. I learned some years ago that the availability of these is of great value for pursuing and successfully booking bus tour business.

These would include a prefab outbuilding to store your necessary tools and supplies, located to a fresh water connection and a lavatory dump.

We don't want to use the lav dump as a commercial RV dump. (And the design will differ from the one shown above -- which is designed for RVs, not motorcoaches specifically -- to not encourage such inquiries.) Heavy use would generate a mess and odor problem.

But motorcoach tour operators that I've dealt with in the past are particularly appreciative of an amenity such as this. They don't pursue discounts very aggressively -- they just pass the costs of the rooms to the tour customers, anyway -- but they like being able to have the coach serviced; and with Trailways no longer in business in most parts of the country, there aren't that many places to get it done any more.

We have a maintenance guy there when a coach is scheduled to arrive to help unload the coach, we have the driver park the coach over the lav dump, we dump the lav and hose down the area around the dump spot; we swab out the lav, refill it and dump in some de-germ, we sweep and mop the coach and get the interior looking nice and fresh, and we wash the coach. Total time, one guy, a little over an hour, maybe two hours if you want to give it a really good job. (And we do. As you can guess, I worked for Trailways years ago, when there was a Trailways...).

Small price to pay for being able to rent an extra 25-50 rooms in a night, even if we have to give a free room to the driver.

What information do luxury hotels keep on guest profiles?

A guest profile on a good property management system will come with everything you see here. Make a reservation, or check into the hotel, one time, and that ‘file’ will exist for years — or until they change the system.

And that’s their ‘floor sample’, the screenshot provided to their prospective hotel company buyers. The ones I’ve used have an added button on the above screen where, with one click, we can bring up your photo and a sample of your signature (both of these come off your drivers’ license when we scan it the first time we check you in).

Why do high-end hotels insist on charging for Wi-Fi service or "resort fees"?

It's sleazy, black-hat marketing. They count on you to pay it rather than kick up a fuss. Often, they will remove the charge if you persist in objecting after they make one attempt to 'explain' it to you (they try that much because some people will, however willingly or grudgingly, come around with an attempt at explanation). It's like that catch on FreeCreditReport.com and similar sites that you don't notice in the fine print, that signs you up in some sort of 'savings club' having a very unclear, if any, purpose, at a $3.00 monthly charge on your credit card bill: a lot of people let it slide, at least for a few months, rather than call them up, wait on hold for twenty minutes, and demand to cancel the 'enrollment'.

One of my own pet peeves in that area is that dollar per night extra charge that gets tacked on to your bill for 'insurance' on the contents of your in-room safe, whether you use the safe or not. Most people don't notice it. Even the contract with the safe supplier provides that the hotel is supposed to take it off if someone complains about it. There may even be a case where an in-room safe was broken into, someone made a claim on that insurance, and the insurance paid off the claim, but I'm not aware of any.

Is it OK to reserve hotel rooms and resell them as a business?

We won’t let you do it with ours, because we have no control over who you re-sell them to, and it becomes a security issue.

We have a company policy on “warehousing”: a room may only be rented to the actual guest, who will actually occupy it. It’s my only assurance that you’re not hiding Tad Cummins and his 15-year-old companion in there.

There are several online travel agencies to whom we make available a certain quantity of rooms, but they don’t actually reserve the rooms until they have a buyer — who, immediately upon their referral of that reservation to us, is subject to the same scrutiny as any other customer seeking to register as a guest. We have their full information. We’re not running a movie theatre or a football stadium, no one reserves rooms and, on the arrival date, shows up with a ticket entitling them to that room.

Hotels for sale: Comfort Inn, Parkersburg, West Virginia

Okay, who wants to go to Parkersburg? There are two hotels on the market here . . .

Property offering

Listing broker: Laurel Hotel Brokers, via LoopNet

TripAdvisor reviews: Bubble score 4.0

Property website:

Comfort Inn, Parkersburg (Choice Hotels child site)

Asking price	$3,650,000.00	Given
Number of rooms	76	Given
Annual gross	$1,149,910.00	Given, but confirm
Occupancy	48.10%	Given
ADR	$82.70	Not given
REVPAR	$41.45	Calculated
Room revenue multiplier	3.15	Not given
Year built	1995	Given

The facility:

This is a 21-year old property. The original design was a bit '80's dated, even when it was built, but didn't look all that bad, and more recent exterior renovations have not been an improvement.

(Perhaps it's a personal taste matter, but I hate Tammy Faye EFIS exteriors. Who are you trying to kid with the apparent age of that property? After you apply that much EFIS, or stucco, or makeup . . . did the hotel, or even Tammy Faye, look that bad before?)

Original exterior


Present appearance, after a coat of Tammy Faye stucco . . .

The patron saint of bad hotel exterior renovation, rest her soul. (I never hated Tammy Faye or really held her past association with Jim Bakker and The PTL Club scandal back in the 1980's against her, I just think her 'extremism is no vice in the war against aging' approach to the application of cheap cosmetics was a bit extreme, and has since been a bad influence on hotel renovation architecture . . .)

The location:

Click for map

Parkersburg has two easily identifiable submarkets, not an unusual layout for a small city of its size. You have the hotels out on the I-77 corridor as one submarket, you have the hotels in the city itself as the other. This property is in the city.

Those properties out on the interstate are going to be much more I-77 dependent and may drag your rates down a bit, but the Parkersburg area is not that isolated, and Wood County has more outlying demand generators.

Any property located in the town itself is going to be more dependent on pro-active sales and marketing. This can offer great success -- the Hampton Inn and the historic Blennerhasset Hotel are both located in this submarket -- but it's going to take a little more work.

This is particularly true for this property, because visibility from a traffic artery is going to be a problem.

The market:

Parkersburg is the third largest city in West Virginia.

The area economy is driven by education and finance. The Bureau of the Fiscal Service, United States Department of the Treasury, is located here; and Highmark Blue Cross has significant operations. Ohio Valley University's campus is on the city's northern border, and the campus of West Virginia University is located on the other side of I-77.

Camden Clark Medical Center is a regional hospital located downtown, three miles from the property. It has recently completed an expansion.

Market information links:

City of Parkersburg -- Official website

Parkersburg, W. Va. -- Wikipedia entry

Ohio Valley University

The physical location (area, surrounding neighborhood):

This property is located in Parkersburg's uptown retail area, within walking distance (a half mile, if you don't mind walking) of a respectably-sized regional mall with the grandiose name of Grand Central Mall. It's within walking distance to several restaurants, something that is lacking by comparison for its main competitor, the Wingate by Wyndham in Vienna.

It is one of two Class A properties proximate to Ohio Valley University. A smart operator would take care to cultivate a close relationship with OVU and its secondary demand generators, and use the hotel's convenient location to its advantage.

One disadvantage that it has is that it's located a bit back off Route 14/Murdoch Avenue, the traffic artery that runs in front of it, and visibility is a challenge that must be managed.

Facility changes recommended:

The property appears to be in pretty good shape. Most of the renovations we'd do here would related to conversion of the property to the Red Lion brand and bringing it into line with their standards, should we convert the property to a Red Lion Inn and Suites.

Added care should be given to ventilation, and the PTAC units in the rooms need to be checked: several people note this to be a problem. Some minor mold remediation may be in order. Any non-working or noisy exhaust fan in a bathroom needs to be replaced.

If the mattresses are more than a year old, you need new mattresses -- that's how long now TripAdvisor hits on the mattresses have been showing up.

Security needs attention: loitering in the parking lot, even by comparatively harmless but noisy drunks, doesn't work.

Several TripAdvisor reviews alluded to slow wi-fi speeds, but that could be an Ethostream problem (Ethostream is Choice Hotels' required -- but often poor quality -- internet provider in its franchised hotels; and if we reflag the hotel, we'd be replacing it with something that actually works, anyway.)

Operational changes recommended:

Both facility design and management, as Beechmont would approach it in this location, will reflect the need to maintain this property as a Class A mid-market property.

Some TripAdvisor reviews of this property indicate a need to tighten up housekeeping and room inventory control. Housekeeping should be tightened up anywhere, but possible excuses for a guest to be checked into a dirty room are rare, if the housekeeping and front office staff are working together as they should be.

Marketing recommendations:

I generally don't recommend a full time director of sales and marketing for a property this small, but in this location it might be listenable. You're not going to shag a lot of traffic off I-77 with it without some severely discounted Exit Information Guide coupons, and visibility is a problem if you are in that part of town. Nonetheless, it has the best raw location of any hotel in the Parkersburg area -- but if you want the business, you're going to have to go out and get it.

For now, marketing at this property needs a fresh look, and it shows in its current performance. The average daily rate claimed by the broker is $82.70, the rack rate according to the Choice Hotels website is $139.00.  I know they're coming off a bad year, with two new hotels opening in the area within each of the last two years, and they seem to be recovering a bit, but we've been seeing too many $67 rates on TripAdvisor and its online travel agency affiliates recently. 

Franchise options:

IF WE EXECUTE A HOTEL MANAGEMENT AGREEMENT WITH AN EVENTUAL BUYER, THAT AGREEMENT WILL PROVIDE THAT WE HAVE ACCESS TO ALL BUSINESS RECORDS OF THE PROPERTY PRIOR TO CLOSING. IF THESE INDICATE THAT THE FRANCHISE NOW IN PLACE IS WORKING AND IS BENEFITING THE PROPERTY, WE GENERALLY ADVISE KEEPING IT, SUBJECT TO FIVE-YEAR TERMINATION OPTIONS.

Nonetheless, we're pretty clear that the Comfort Inn brand is not working at this property. Choice Hotels' franchises are oversold here, as they are in so many places: they now have more hotels in Parkersburg than they are able to support -- but hey, whatever keeps the fees and royalties rolling in for them. That new Sleep Inn out in the I-77 corridor that opened two years ago did not help, and a Comfort Suites in Mineral Wells draws a lot of Choice-generated traffic. The cumulative effect is that all three of these properties are not well-served by Choice, and their rates lag competitively, and they underperform.

We recommend conversion of this property to a Red Lion Inn and Suites. As a Class A mid-market brand, Red Lion is gaining in competitive strength, while Comfort Inn has been in decline for more than ten years now. Red Lion also has a historic willingness (and in the eastern United States, a present, pressing need) to accept an older property as a franchisee and -- assuming you renovate and keep it up in accordance with their standards -- make it possible for that property to compete against any Class A property with a first-tier franchise.

Red Lion isn't going to hand success to you on a plate, but Choice Hotels clearly isn't; and unlike Red Lion, Choice has proven it already. If you want success that comes in a 'kit' you can buy, sign up as an Amway distributor. It's only going to happen for you at this location in Parkersburg only if you have strong local marketing -- but we anticipate and assume that with any hotel franchise, even first-tier franchises like Marriott, Hilton and IHG.

What does a Red Lion look like?

We have no affiliation with Red Lion. (Over the last year, some people have started to wonder if Beechmont is getting to be the Red Lion guys, because recently we've come to recommend them frequently). What we like about Red Lion is that you can build a brand new one and stand it up against any Hampton Inn or Holiday Inn Express -- or take an older property such as this one, renovate it to pristine condition, and re-flag it as a Red Lion, and it would fit right in without having it make your new property look bad. The "older" look fits right in with the quirkiness.



If you want to build a brand new hotel, Red Lion will justify your investment; if you can't spend more than five million, pick up a property like this, convert it to their standards, and you're still in the
game.

Our recommendation:

I see little about this property that makes it worth more than three times its gross room revenue: its location is compensated by its lack of visibility, its next to worthless Choice Hotels affiliation, and its aging appearance (which its visit a couple of years ago by the ghost of Tammy Faye amplified, rather than rectified). Its location -- once offset by its flaws and failings -- is good for a premium of, at most, 3.1xGRR if you pay it a visit and find no further problems, and it's been sitting on the market for several months.

Offer $3mil and see what they do. Be prepared to go as high as $3.2mil, but only if they agree to deliver unencumbered by franchise and unencumbered by management.

Food and beverage should be limited to the required continental breakfast, and a catering kitchen capable of supporting the events.

Evaluation:

Value of property based on data given:	High	$3,200,000
(Our estimate)	Low	$3,000,000
Renovation required	Flag change
Recommended budget	$250,000.00	$750,000.00

Who should buy this hotel?

Someone who had some skill and experience doing corporate and group marketing, but not a large, policy-bound corporate owner. 

You'll want a sharp, aggressive, think-outside-the-box salesperson, even if it's someone that only works part time. The only thing trying to manage it by committee is going to do for this property is add to the overhead, and have the various members of your "management team" getting in each other's way.

If you currently own or operate a hotel in Nashville, Montgomery, Ala.; Searcy, Ark., Abilene or Lubbock, Texas; Camp Hill, or Harrisburg, Pa.; Covington, Ky.; Wilkes-Barre-Scranton, Pa.; or the Minneapolis or Phoenix area;  you should consider a Parkersburg property, especially if one of more of your current properties is getting corporate or group business from one of the companies previously mentioned.

Who should not buy this hotel?

Without the marketing skill and the ability to reach out to corporate and group customers, this property is going to continue to perform below its potential.

The location is excellent, visibility is dicey -- and even so, it racks at $139. But you'll never get the full potential out of this property -- and in a bad year, be lucky to get half that much as a room rate -- if you don't know how to do marketing, or get someone in there who can. You can stubbornly hang on to that $139 rack rate, but your marketing is going to continue to be way too discount-dependent

Beechmont links

• Beechmont Hotels Corporation
• What Would Mike Do?: The hotel blog

About us

Beechmont Hotels Corporation is a hotel management company based in Winston-Salem, N. C. We frequently have occasion to perform asset identification services for potential clients who are seeking to acquire hotels, and inform them as to how a particular hotel listed for sale can best serve their investment needs -- or not.

After a time, we will republish the information here as a short feasibility study (unless an agreement with the potential client for whom we originally examined the property prohibits it).

Our evaluation is based on our own subjective opinion, using data collected from freely available sources online, unless otherwise noted in the Disclosures above. Our advice as shown here is as we would advise a client. You are free to accept or reject it, and should check behind us and make your own evaluation.

Ultimately, you are responsible for your own decisions, including whether to rely upon our opinion or to confirm our assessment for yourself, and we assume nor accept any liability.

When we choose -- ourselves -- a hotel offering to evaluate here, we choose only hotels that we have something nice to say about, a positive recommendation to make; hotels that we wouldn't mind signing to manage ourselves for twenty years.

When someone submits one to us, we're totally candid and spare no one's interests or feelings. If it's a bum deal, we'll simply tell you, don't touch it with a ten foot pole, and we don't care who gets mad.

If you are contemplating purchase of a hotel, or if you are a hotel broker, and would like for us to complete an evaluation similar to this for you for the hotel that you are considering, send a PayPal for $100 at makeitrain18018@gmail.com .

(It has to be a hotel that is currently listed for sale, that you can look up on Loopnet or a broker website. I will pass the information to you privately, and wait a few weeks before I republish it here, unless we make other arrangements in advance -- at a slight extra charge -- to keep it just between us.)

Click here for a listing of other hotels for sale and available that we've reviewed.

What does it take to start a hotel?

Money. Of course.

Unfortunately, way too many hotels are 'started' by people who are completely unmindful of the fact that they could need anything more than that. Even more unfortunately, the ending is frequently a disappointing, if not unhappy, one in such cases.

You posted this question - whoever you are - anonymously, so I'm going to make certain (hopefully accurate) assumptions about you, in an attempt (hopefully appropriate) to make it a little easier for me to answer your question intelligently.

• You are looking to 'start' your hotel in the USA.
• You have capital, or access to adequate (although not unlimited) capital, and financing won't be a problem.
• You have limited, if any, hotel experience.
• You're sensible when it comes to business, you're not expecting to get rich quickly, you're in it for the long haul, and your expectations about life are generally realistic.
• You're a respectable, decent person who desires to be part of a respectable venture in which you can take pride; not someone who's in it for the fast buck, who just wants to launch it next year, hoping to sell it off the following year for a quickie profit, and/or who'd just be trying to milk the last five dollars out of a $3.98 investment for however long it took to find some sucker to buy it.
• Since you're asking, how does one 'start' . . . you're probably contemplating new construction, not acquiring an existing hotel. (I have a suggestion. Please consider it carefully. If it's your first time, and you have no construction or real estate development experience, consider the acquisition route, at least starting out. New construction requires somewhat more of an investment, it'll take awhile before you get a payout [where, with an existing property, you're getting at least some cash flow the first night after you take possession], and there is more risk involved [e.g., unforeseen cost overruns]. You can always do new hotels later as you gain experience and confidence - as well as revenue streams from your existing properties.)
• Accordingly, I'm going to assume that you're someone I should advise conservatively.

If my answer doesn't come even close to what you need, it'll be because a dialogue would be more appropriate and we need to have a talk. Please feel welcome to contact me.

Hotel for sale: Wingate by Wyndham Louisville East

Property offering

Listing broker: MBA Hotel Brokers.  (This is a "pig in a poke" listing that does not identify the specific property, and I don't like those. It's more annoyance than harm: merely downloading a property photo, then running it through Google Image Search, identifies the particular property for you about half the time. But I still appreciate transparency, and straight answers. If I buy, it'll be because I made the choice to buy; it won't be because you sold it to me.)

TripAdvisor reviews: Bubble score 4.0.

Property website:

Wingate by Wyndham Louisville East (Wingate by Wyndham child site)

Asking price	$6,800,000	Given
Number of rooms	74	Given
Annual gross	$1,700,000.00	Given
Occupancy	83%	Estimated*
ADR	$75.65	Estimated*
REVPAR	$62.94	Calculated
Room revenue multiplier	4	Calculated
Year built	2006	Given

* - TripAdvisor shows lowest publicly available rates for this property between $84.00 (current) and $94.00 (June, 2017); which we averaged out to an average rack rate of $89.00. ADR is based on 85% of rack, which you usually see in a property listed for sale unless some unique marketing or pricing scheme is in place that you don't know about.

In a property that has no restaurant or lounge or some other source of significant revenue, nearly all revenue is from rooms, so REVPAR (in this case, calculated by simply dividing the annual revenue given by the number of rooms, divided again by 365) becomes pretty meaningless, However, it does come in handy for one thing: in a limited service property when an occupancy figure is withheld, you can calculate it by simply dividing REVPAR by ADR.

The facility:

This is a newer, Wingate prototype facility, constructed in 2006.

How do you get into hotel management?

Start as a night auditor; preferably in the largest full-service hotel, with the most food-and-beverage, meeting and banquet, lounge and gift shop operations on premises, that you can get to hire you.

It's actually a pretty easy job to get as far as hotel front-office jobs go - the hours are crap. It runs in most properties at 11 at night to 7 in the morning, (and no, it can't be done in the daytime), which is why the demand exceeds supply when the economy is good and jobs are plentiful, and why supply doesn't exceed demand by much when jobs are scarce and you see more people competing for any job they can get (including hotel night audit jobs with crappy hours). You don't want to be there forever, but as you yourself pointed out, you're there to learn.

That's where you learn how the numbers go together and what affects them, essential know-how for the management of any business.

Pay attention to what you're doing in that job. Back in the day, experience was a plus, but if you brought along sufficient accounting skills to balance your checkbook the old fashioned way (using the form printed on the back of your bank statement, making the entries and doing the math; rather than just checking your balance online), you could be trained - balancing accounts, after all, is most of what the job of night audit is about. (Most business get audited by their accountants every quarter. Hotels are unique in that they get audited every night.)  Nowadays, nearly all hotels have computerized front desk management systems; so to too many hire-for-personality-and-train-for-ability hotel 'administrators' and the people they insist on hiring, the job consists mostly of going down a list of reports to be printed, and printing out, and collating and routing, several stacks of reports. If it wasn't for the fact that it's necessary to do a bucket check and confirm the rates of all your guests, and make sure your cash and credit card totals balance (as well as your restaurant and banquet checks if it's a full-service hotel), a trained monkey or service animal could do it. 

Is price discrimination good or bad?

Price discrimination is neither good nor bad. Price discrimination, when it occurs, is part of the price: you either pay the price asked of you, negotiate something more favorable if you can, or seek something more favorable elsewhere.

Hotels are a business that, to someone who sees price discrimination as a bad thing, would be among the most persistent offenders; so let's use those as an example.