Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

It may be more important to calculate the revenue earned, since I'm guessing not all rooms rent for the same fee. Also, you're not doubt providing more than simply a meeting space - catering and video/audio services.

You might also calculate the # of business days (i.e., weekends) instead of all days in a month (22 instead of 30).

I suspect there is a flaw in your calculation. I doubt it should be calculated by the hour. Instead, I would calculate based on events.

I sincerely doubt it is possible to have more than two (maybe three) events per day. The hourly calculation is flawed because a person who schedules a meeting from 7:00 AM to 12:30 really blocks off any meeting which would have started at lunch time.

I'll add my weight to Frank Hurtte's diagnosis.

When you analyse occupancy/usage rates for an entity you can only drill down to the lowest salable level. For example, for an airline it's a seat-sector. You can't sell the person a ticket half-way. For hotels it's a room night - unless you ask people to leave halfway through the night.

For function rooms, it's however you need to sell them based on the set-up, service and break-down business model. I suspect in general it's on the basis of a breakfast meeting, a half-day meeting, a lunch meeting, another half-day meeting, a dinner function, and so on. You create these saleable blocks - in the knowledge that if you sell a breakfast meeting, you can't expect to sell a morning meeting in the same room unless you can turn it around in time. Which you probably cannot.

So your pricing for these "sector/products" has to reflect the missed opportunity, as well as providing the value your market is expecting.

Trying to sell a function room by the hour doesn't make sense. You can't sell two separate hours, back-to-back, to separate customers - it's just not going to work.

as far as measuring revenues is concerned - honestly, I would look at gross and nett returns per square meter or per square foot, whichever makes most sense to you. That way, you can judge the performance of smaller rooms versus larger rooms on an equivalent basis.

You might even learn from your analysis that you want to change the mix of room sizes, although most modern facilities have flexible partitioning to accommodate a range of changing guest requirements.

Hope that helps.

ChrisB