Case Study
How Vision Hospitality Group Reduced CPOR by $4
Connecting revenue forecasts directly to department-level staffing models helped Vision Hospitality reduce CPOR, improve margins, and keep managers engaged.
For most hotel operators, the revenue forecast and the labor plan live in two different worlds.
Finance teams build the forecast. Operations teams manage the schedule. And the link between them, where occupancy predictions translate to labor standards, often gets lost to manual work, guesswork, or missed altogether.
Vision Hospitality Group recognized that gap and found a solution to close it.
The Real Labor Problem Was Timing
Jenelle Hawkins, Director of Operational Excellence at Vision Hospitality Group, has spent nearly nine years focused on one question: how do you get hotel teams operating at their highest possible efficiency?
Post-pandemic, that question got harder to answer. In some markets, labor costs climbed as much as 35%. General managers were stretched thin, working more hours on the floor and less time on planning. And most labor management was still happening in the rearview mirror.
Payroll reports came after the week was done. P&L statements arrived at month-end. By the time leaders saw the numbers, the opportunity to act had already closed.
The Forecast Was Already There. It Just Wasn't Doing Enough.
VHG had already adopted ProfitSword for revenue forecasting across the portfolio. Finance teams were building detailed, property-level forecasts. But those forecasts weren't automatically driving staffing decisions. That connection still required manual interpretation, spreadsheet translation, and time GMs didn't have.
Hotel Effectiveness changed that by connecting directly to ProfitSword, pulling revenue forecasts, and converting them into department-level labor models in real-time. Instead of translating a forecast into a schedule by hand, GMs see a clear, demand-aligned guide for how many hours each department.
We input our forecasts into ProfitSword, which feeds into Hotel Effectiveness. You just follow the map and follow the model. It makes it really, really simple.
That simplicity mattered. VHG's GMs are operators first. They're on the floor, with their teams. A system that required deep technical fluency or significant daily investment wouldn't stick. Hotel Effectiveness was designed to be used for a few minutes each day, and at VHG, that's exactly how it's used.
If you use it as intended, literally five or ten minutes a day, it's going to give you all the data you need to make some really quick decisions and to see a lot of high impact in your operations.
That simplicity mattered. VHG's GMs are operators first. They're on the floor, with their teams. A system that required deep technical fluency or significant daily investment wouldn't stick. Hotel Effectiveness was designed to be used for a few minutes each day, and at VHG, that's exactly how it's used.
If you use it as intended, literally five or ten minutes a day, it's going to give you all the data you need to make some really quick decisions and to see a lot of high impact in your operations.
Where the Results Showed Up
The impact at VHG showed up in the metrics that matter most.
At one property that Jenelle took on in a regional capacity, CPOR dropped by more than $4 year over year after Hotel Effectiveness was fully implemented. The GMs who engaged most consistently with the platform showed the greatest cost reductions and the strongest increases in GOP.
The connection between labor discipline and GM well-being is something Jenelle talks about directly. When managers spend less time reconciling spreadsheets, they have more time for the work that actually builds retention.
That pattern played out in associate engagement surveys. Higher system engagement correlated with higher reported satisfaction, not just for guests, but for the managers running the properties.
Uses That Go Beyond Daily Scheduling
The operational footprint of Hotel Effectiveness at VHG extends beyond the morning check-in.
New property openings
When VHG opens a hotel, the team uses forecasted demand to build a hiring model before the property opens its doors. Instead of blanket hiring, GMs start with a data-driven baseline. "Do I need four front desk agents? Do I need five or six? Instead of guessing, now you have a real guide."
Contract labor tracking
VHG uses the PerfectTime feature to track individual contract laborers and manage invoicing accuracy. Before Hotel Effectiveness, invoice disputes with contract labor companies were a recurring issue. PerfectTime resolved them.
Compliance and audit readiness
When one VHG property was audited by the Department of Labor, Jenelle had no anxiety about it. Schedules stored in Hotel Effectiveness are clean, complete, and immediately accessible. "You just go, download your HE schedules, and hand them over. It was the easiest Department of Labor audit I've ever seen." No scrambling for Excel files that might have been overwritten or deleted.
What ProfitSword and Hotel Effectiveness Make Possible
Jenelle remembers what forecasting looked like before ProfitSword.
Shutting your office door for eight hours, putting out the do not disturb sign, gathering all this data from different sources, sitting with your table of spreadsheets.
A significant block of time, every period, just to produce a number.
ProfitSword consolidated all of that into one place. Hotel Effectiveness turned the output into an action plan. Together, the two systems gave GMs their time back.
That's what Jenelle wants operators to understand. It's not about removing decision-making from managers or replacing operational knowledge. It's about eliminating the manual work that gets in the way of using that knowledge.
It's about giving them their time back. We now have the time to really train them on the mechanics behind this, where previously we didn't have that luxury because they were having to sit and do this manual work.
What ProfitSword and Hotel Effectiveness Make Possible
Jenelle remembers what forecasting looked like before ProfitSword.
Shutting your office door for eight hours, putting out the do not disturb sign, gathering all this data from different sources, sitting with your table of spreadsheets.
A significant block of time, every period, just to produce a number.
ProfitSword consolidated all of that into one place. Hotel Effectiveness turned the output into an action plan. Together, the two systems gave GMs their time back.
That's what Jenelle wants operators to understand. It's not about removing decision-making from managers or replacing operational knowledge. It's about eliminating the manual work that gets in the way of using that knowledge.
It's about giving them their time back. We now have the time to really train them on the mechanics behind this, where previously we didn't have that luxury because they were having to sit and do this manual work.
What This Means for Your Hotel Portfolio
If your revenue forecast lives in one system and your labor plan lives somewhere else, you're managing a gap. That gap costs time, introduces error, and slows the response to changing demand.
Connecting ProfitSword and Hotel Effectiveness closes it. The forecast drives the labor model. The labor model drives the schedule. GMs check in daily, make adjustments, and move on. The data builds a clean, accessible record over time.
For VHG, the result was lower costs, better margins, and managers who stayed.
Benchmark your labor performance against hotel industry standards.
Visit HotelData.com to see where your CPOR and productivity metrics stand.
________
Vision Hospitality Group is a multi-property hotel management company focused on operational excellence, associate satisfaction, and owner performance.
What This Means for Your Hotel Portfolio
If your revenue forecast lives in one system and your labor plan lives somewhere else, you're managing a gap. That gap costs time, introduces error, and slows the response to changing demand.
Connecting ProfitSword and Hotel Effectiveness closes it. The forecast drives the labor model. The labor model drives the schedule. GMs check in daily, make adjustments, and move on. The data builds a clean, accessible record over time.
For VHG, the result was lower costs, better margins, and managers who stayed.
Benchmark your labor performance against hotel industry standards.
Visit HotelData.com to see where your CPOR and productivity metrics stand.
________
Vision Hospitality Group is a multi-property hotel management company focused on operational excellence, associate satisfaction, and owner performance.
See how Hotel Effectiveness connects to ProfitSword in your portfolio.
