I'm current in the process of writing a business plan for a new hostel but I have a question for all you past and present hostel owners...
Are there any helpful/industry standard analysis techniques that can be used to measure a hostels performance? For example, occupancy rate or staff costs as a % of turnover.
I realise this is quite a boring q but i'm more of a numbers person and these types of things seem to interest me!
Apart from profit, is there anything else you find useful to look at when trying to gauge performance?
15 years
This is probably not much help but I know you can find some of that sort of stuff online in Australia (government websites etc) - it is about hotels rather than hostels but you might be able to gear it towards your hostel? I had to teach business studies a while back and was amazed at the business suggestions etc available on the government sites.
15 years
Apart from profit, is there anything else you find useful to look at when trying to gauge performance?
Obviously, the occupancy rate, then average revenue per bed night (it´s easy to have a high occupancy if your rates are very low!), average revenue per bed night from additional services like breakfast, F&B, internet, laundry machines etc.
Staff costs in % of revenue is not really so comparable between different hostels, as it obviously depends a lot on how much you have to pay for staff and how many beds you have. Anyway, staff costs and rent shouldn´t be much more than 25% (each) of the turnover.
15 years
I'm current in the process of writing a business plan for a new hostel but I have a question for all you past and present hostel owners...
Are there any helpful/industry standard analysis techniques that can be used to measure a hostels performance? For example, occupancy rate or staff costs as a % of turnover.
I realise this is quite a boring q but i'm more of a numbers person and these types of things seem to interest me!
Apart from profit, is there anything else you find useful to look at when trying to gauge performance?
From a operational perspective, I think you can guage performance in areas like Maintenance, Are you having to fix the same thing reaptedly? Are you constantly replacing staff? What is the annual turnover of staff? This things are called "hidden costs" because they will not show up on your balance sheet.
15 years
I worked in a hostel where the occupancy rates were constantly increasing but so were the fixed and variable costs of the business. It is important that the cost:revenue ratio does not get out of control, otherwise you will be soon closing your hostel down.
Related Pages
Log in to join discussion