Making Hospitality

Great Again

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Bored Hotelier

Bored Hotelier

Budgeting for 2027. Here's How to Think About It.

Every 2027 hotel forecast was written before February 28th. The baseline everyone was planning from no longer exists. Here's how to build a credible budget for 2027 — three scenarios, the leading indicators to watch and how to present it to your owner.

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❋ Hospitality Awards

GM of the Year. Sponsored by whoever bought the table.

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The Numbers Room

  • A luxury hotel pool at golden hour with hidden underwater chains and weights labelled Labour Costs, OTA Commission and Operating Costs — illustrating how RevPAR growth conceals the cost pressures quietly dragging hotel profit margins down.

    RevPAR Is Up.

    Margins Are Down. Bonus Received.

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  • RevPAM one of the best metrics for hotel performance instead of RGI and STR

    RevPAM — The Metric Your Hotel Should Have Been Using Yesterday

    RevPAR tells you how your rooms are performing. It says nothing about your spa, your ballroom, your rooftop bar or your gym sitting empty at €0 per square metre every single day. Here's the metric that measures your whole hotel - and the formula to calculate it yourself in thirty minutes.

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  • A luxury jungle villa with private pool at golden hour — representing the hotel performance gap between what RGI benchmarking measures and the true revenue potential of a property's full offering.

    How RGI is killing your business

    Your hotel's performance is being judged by a metric owned by a real estate data company. And everyone in the room already knows the comp set isn't comparable. But nobody says it out loud.

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  • A measuring ruler on the floor of a hotel room — representing the concept of revenue per square metre and the limitations of RevPAR as a hotel performance metric

    The Company That Tells Hotels How They're Doing Has Never Run a Hotel.

    The company that tells every hotel in the world how they're performing is a real estate firm worth $16.5 billion. They knew a better metric existed in 2012. Nothing changed.

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  • A glass and gold floating ballroom set up for a banquet dinner in the middle of the ocean at sunset — illustrating the untapped revenue potential of hotel event and meeting spaces that sit empty and unmeasured.

    The Ballroom Trap

    Your sales team is guarding empty space and calling it strategy.

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The AI Files

  • Hotel marketing desk with floating price tags labelled SEO, GEO, AEO and LLMO — illustrating the growing industry of AI search optimisation packages being sold to hoteliers for what is fundamentally still SEO.

    GEO. AEO. LLMO. It's Still Just SEO.

    Google published an official guide to AI search optimisation. The headline finding: it's still SEO. Same index, same signals, same fundamentals. With just one thing being different.

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  • A notepad with the handwritten question 'Best hotel in the city?' on a luxury hotel lobby desk — illustrating how travellers are now asking AI tools like ChatGPT for hotel recommendations instead of searching Google.

    Your Next Guest Is Asking ChatGPT Where to Stay. Is Your Hotel in the Answer?

    Somewhere your marketing team is optimising your Instagram bio while your competitor is being recommended by ChatGPT to every traveler who asks. Here's how to fix that. Step by step.

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  • A towering stack of unread hotel press releases on a marketing office desk — representing why AI search visibility now depends on writing press releases that actually say something worth reading.

    Finally Someone Is Reading Your Press Releases

    Good news — someone is finally reading your press releases. Bad news... it's AI.

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  • A large AI server unit standing in a luxury hotel lobby alongside a traditional reception desk and bellboy cart — representing the challenge of implementing AI technology in hospitality without fixing the underlying data and processes first

    Every Hotel Is Buying AI. Almost Nobody Is Ready For It.

    Hotels are rushing into AI. But technology can't fix what management won't face.

    Garbage in. Garbage out.

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The Green Room

  • Hotel back-of-house corridor with paper files and folders — illustrating the gap between front-of-house sustainability commitments and the operational reality behind them.

    The Sustainable Hotel…

    …Front of House, Anyway.

    Hotels are getting sustainability right. In the areas guests can see. Doing the right thing in hospitality costs more — because the ocean won't send an invoice for the damages.

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  • A Psychologist Walked Into a Hotel to run a study, however the outcomes of the study were never used by anyone in reality.

    A Psychologist Walked Into a Hotel. Nobody Listened.

    A 2008 study ran seven messages across hundreds of hotel rooms. The science was clear. The industry nodded, cited it at a conference or two, and went back to printing the same card.

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The Daily

  • A hotel professional answering a late night WhatsApp message — illustrating the cultural divide between right to disconnect legislation in Europe and the always-on work culture of Middle East and Asian hospitality markets.

    The Right to Disconnect in the Industry That Never Does.

    The out of office email that the hospitality industry never quite sends - and the market that never quite accepts it.

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  • A hotel GM's office overwhelmed with trophies, plaques, certificates and awards including a 'GM of the Century' trophy and 'Outstanding Achievement Award' — questioning whether hospitality industry recognition reflects genuine performance or the size

    GM of the Year. Sponsored by Whoever Bought the Table.

    Every year the hospitality industry produces a fresh crop of award winners. The trophies are heavy. The Gala Dinners are expensive. The acceptance speeches are humble. And the winners — with remarkable consistency — are the people whose hotels paid for the table.

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  • Copy of Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari open on a table in a luxury hotel lobby — illustrating how shared myths and storytelling are the foundation of every successful hotel brand.

    Every Hotel Brand Is a Myth

    Every hotel brand is a shared myth. The ones that last get their micro-stories right — at every touchpoint, every day. The ones that don't, don't last.

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  • Beautifully plated fine dining dish on a restaurant table — representing the debate between food photography and the dining experience in Michelin starred restaurants

    The Phone Eats First

    Michel Roux put up a sign. No photos, please. Gordon Ramsay went straight to Twitter. Two three-star chefs. Two completely opposite views. One very interesting question for the entire fine-dining industry.

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  • Cocktail on a beachfront bar at sunset, with a cocktail menu open beside it — illustrating the guest retention and F&B revenue strategies that separate thriving beach resorts from those committing commercial mistake

    Three Resorts. One Beach. One Winner.

    Three five-star resorts. Same beach. Same chain. Same guests. One of them sent guests to the competition and paid for the bus. Literally.

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  • Two drinks and a bar menu on a hotel bar counter with a billiard table and ocean view in the background — representing the impact of entertainment choices on hotel bar revenue and F&B strategy

    Two Guys. One Table. Zero Revenue.

    A masterclass in running the least profitable bar in hospitality. Starring two guys, one billiard table, and approximately one beer each.

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  • Aerial view of a luxury overwater villa in the Maldives at sunset — illustrating the gap between the hotel experience guests invest in and the loyalty they lose when a flat 'no' at checkout undoes everything.

    The Most Expensive Word in Hospitality

    Spoiler: it's not 'renovation'.

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  • A hotel guest writing notes over morning coffee on a jungle terrace — representing the moment a loyalty member decides whether to return, recommend, or walk away for good.

    One "No." Millions Lost. Here's How

    What a receptionist in Bali can teach you about global hotel sales.

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  • A Caesar salad served at a beachfront hotel restaurant at sunset — the deceptively simple dish at the centre of a hotel operations and billing process that should never have been this complicated.

    4 Receipts. 1 Salad

    I don't work for that hotel. I was on holiday. But even I was scared of their finance department. So I signed everything.

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  • Aerial view of a luxury beachfront hotel resort with infinity pool, beach loungers and restaurant terraces at golden hour — representing the hospitality industry and the skilled professionals who run these complex operations every day

    The Most Underestimated Professionals on the Planet

    Every crisis hits hospitality first. The jobs disappear overnight. And then the rest of the world wonders why it can't find people who actually know how to handle pressure.

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About Bored Hotelier

Hotels are beautiful businesses run by people who sometimes forget that.

This blog exists for the hoteliers, owners and asset managers who haven't forgotten - and who are quietly losing their minds watching perfectly good properties make perfectly avoidable mistakes.

Nearly two decades of notes. Finally writing them down.

Because someone has to make hospitality great again.

— The Bored Hotelier 😉

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