Posts by Sarah McCay Tams
Why Forecasting and Budgeting Still Break Down in Hotels
Hotel teams today often struggle with forecasting and budgeting because the process still relies on disconnected systems, static assumptions, and manual work. Revenue changes daily. Labor needs shift by occupancy. Expenses move with demand, staffing, maintenance, and owner priorities. Yet many hotels still build budgets in one place, manage labor in another, track performance somewhere…
Read MoreHow to Build a Connected Hotel
Hotel teams are working harder than ever. They are managing volatile demand, rising guest expectations, labor pressure, owner scrutiny, and increasingly complex technology stacks. Yet for many hotels, the real challenge is not the amount of effort going into the operation. It is the number of gaps between the systems, teams, and decisions that shape…
Read MoreHotel Budget Season: How to Prepare for 2027
Hotel budget season is more than an annual finance exercise. Done well, it gives hotel leaders a clear plan for growth, cost control, and profitability. For 2027, that plan needs to rest on better data. Demand patterns continue to shift, labor costs remain under pressure, and operators face rising expectations from owners, guests, and teams.…
Read MoreHow to Build a Streamlined Guest Communication System
Guest communication works best when it feels simple to the guest and structured for the team. Guests expect quick answers, clear updates, and fewer points of friction. They want to message the hotel from their phone, get the right information, and trust that requests will not disappear between departments. For hotel teams, the challenge is…
Read MoreHow to Improve Housekeeping Efficiency Without Increasing Staff
Housekeeping teams sit at the center of hotel performance. They influence room readiness, guest satisfaction, labor costs, and the speed at which revenue moves through the property. Yet many hotel operators still try to solve housekeeping pressure by asking the same teams to do more with limited visibility, manual processes, and shifting daily priorities. Adding…
Read MoreHow Automated Financial Reporting Improves Hotel Operations
Across many hotel portfolios, teams still depend on spreadsheets, manual data pulls, paper audit packets, and disconnected systems to understand performance. By the time leaders review the numbers, the operational window to act may have already closed. That gap affects more than finance. It shapes staffing, purchasing, forecasting, ownership reporting, and day-to-day decision-making. Automated financial…
Read MoreWhy Preventive Maintenance Is Critical for Hotel Performance
Hotel performance is often judged through revenue, labor, and guest satisfaction. Maintenance sits behind all three. When assets work as expected, hotel teams move faster, guests notice fewer service issues, and operators avoid the costly disruption that comes with emergency repairs. When maintenance becomes reactive, performance starts to slip. Rooms go out of order. Engineering…
Read MoreHotel Labor Costs Rose in Q1 2026, But Productivity Helped Soften the Blow
Labor costs are still rising for U.S. hotels, but Q1 2026 offered operators a more encouraging signal than the headline number suggests. According to HotelData.com’s Q1 2026 Hotel Labor Costs Report, Labor Cost per Occupied Room, or CPOR, increased from $45.96 in Q1 2025 to $46.79 in Q1 2026 across All Hotels, a 1.8% year-over-year…
Read MoreHow to Automate Guest Communication Without Losing Personalization
Hotel guests do not want more messages. They want the right message, at the right time, with the right context. For hotel leaders, that is the difference between communication automation that improves service and automation that makes hospitality feel generic. The goal is not to replace human service. It is to remove the manual work…
Read MoreActabl Hires Global Hotel Engineering Leader as SVP of AI Asset Management
Rob Bahl, a Marriott veteran, joins Actabl to help hotel owners and operators use AI to extend asset life and manage their buildings with excellence. Denver, Colorado – June 4, 2026 — Actabl today named Rob Bahl Senior Vice President, AI Asset Management, a move that puts decades of hotel engineering leadership experience behind the…
Read MoreActabl Launches Forward-Deployed Engineering for the Hotel Industry
Actabl engineers will work alongside hotel companies to build custom data, analytics, and AI solutions, applying a model proven by Palantir and now adopted by OpenAI and Anthropic Denver, Colorado – June 3, 2026 – Actabl, the unified platform for hotel business intelligence, labor management, and operations, today opened early access to a new program…
Read MoreHow Operations Management Improves Hotel Performance
Hotel leaders are not short on operational effort. They are short on timely visibility. Across a hotel portfolio, performance is shaped by decisions made hour by hour: how many people are scheduled, where labor is deployed, whether housekeeping productivity is on pace, and whether managers can adjust before costs hit the P&L. That makes operations…
Read MoreHow Hotels Use Data to Make Faster, Smarter Decisions
Hotel teams are not lacking data. They are lacking clarity. Across most properties, data sits in separate systems. Revenue in one platform. Labor in another. Financial reporting somewhere else. Each system answers a different question. None provides a complete picture. Why Data Alone is Not Enough Many hotels invest in reporting tools but still struggle to…
Read MoreStrong Q1, Softer Outlook: Why Hotels Need a Revenue-Efficiency Plan for 2026
Q1 2026 gave hotel leaders a rare combination: stronger demand, higher rate, better total revenue, and improved profitability. Across the dataset discussed in Actabl’s webinar, ADR rose 6%, RevPAR increased 8.7%, TRevPAR grew 9.4%, and GOP improved by four percentage points year over year. That is the good news. The harder question is, what comes…
Read MoreQ1 Hotel Profitability Improved, But 2026 Will Test the Discipline Behind the Margin
Hotel profitability improved in Q1 2026, and that should give operators reason for confidence. But the bigger question is not whether margins moved in the right direction. It is whether hotels can protect those gains throughout the rest of the year. According to the Q1 2026 Hotel Profitability Report from HotelData.com, based on data from…
Read MoreWhat is CapEx Planning and Why it Matters for Hotel Profitability
Hotel assets shape profitability. A boiler, roof, HVAC unit, elevator, guestroom asset, or major renovation project can affect operating costs, guest experience, owner confidence, and long-term asset value. Yet many hotel teams still manage capital planning through spreadsheets, email chains, static budgets, and disconnected maintenance records. That creates risk. When asset data sits in one…
Read MoreThe Quiet Data Problem Hiding in Your Night Audit
Most hotel labor management conversations start with scheduling, forecasting, or cost per occupied room. Those are the right places to focus, but there’s a step further upstream that quietly sets the tone for all of it: the moment someone manually enters housekeeping cleans into a labor management system at the end of a long shift.…
Read MoreHow Hotel Software Improves Guest Experience Without Losing the Human Touch
Hotel technology should not replace hospitality. It should protect it. Guests expect faster communication, cleaner handoffs, and fewer points of friction. They want to message the hotel from their phone, get clear answers, and trust that requests will not get lost between departments. At the same time, they still expect warmth, judgment, and personal attention.…
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