NASHVILLE, Tennessee — The best group travel mix will differ from property to property, but as the segment pushes closer to full recovery, noticing the trends associated with higher group occupancy will be vital for revenue and profits.
Speaking during the "Find the Ideal Group Mix" session at the 2024 Hotel Data Conference, STR Senior Data Analyst Brannan Doyle said group travel demand is right back in the mix with some room to grow, but it's being discounted at a13% to 14% clip to transient travel after being at 10% in 2019.
Group rates are now growing faster than transient rates, though.
"Within the next year or two, group is going to have caught up significantly and be a lot closer to the discount rate that we were looking at in 2019 and the beginning of 2020," he said.
Group revenue per available room recovery is still lagging as well due to the rate component. In 2019, group made up 22% of total RevPAR at luxury and upper-upscale hotels, but that number is down to 18% year to date in 2024.
The outlook on group has changed over the past several years, said Linda Gulrajani, vice president of revenue strategy at Marcus Hotels & Resorts. Hoteliers have applied increased focus on operational efficiencies for the segment as labor costs, and the costs of goods and capital continue to rise due to inflation, she said.
"I think that's ready to level off, but it's been a brutal couple of years in terms of expense management," she said.
On the operations side, there's been a shift to prioritize profitability rather than just revenue "because things aren't the same as they used to be." Gulrajani said hotels have been doing better than ever with revenue management since the pandemic.
"I don't think we've talked enough about how successful the industry has been in maintaining our rates and utilizing revenue management technology to hold our rates strong," she said. "We're entering this next phase in a way better position than we've ever had been before."
Revenue and Profitability Correlated to Group Occupancy
Establishing a base of lower-rated roup occupancy and then filling the hotel out with higher-rated leisure and transient demand has generally been a good strategy for revenue and profitability. Even with discounted rates on the group side, there's a strong correlation between higher RevPAR and gross operating profits per available room with a higher group occupancy percentage across all U.S. properties.
When broken down between four groups of 0-10%, 11-25%, 25-50% and more than 50% in regard to group occupancy, RevPAR trends higher as occupancy is higher.
"This trend is very straightforward, at least on average in the U.S. for the past 12 months. As group occupancy increases, RevPAR tends to go up along with it," Doyle said.
When filtered for just luxury and upper-upscale properties, the trend remains the same: on average, the higher the group occupancy, the higher the RevPAR. Hotels with group occupancy of 0-10% have an average RevPAR of $173, while hotels with a group occupancy of more than 50% have an average RevPAR of $199.
"I thought there might be some kind of diminishing return since obviously group rates tend to be discounted, but sure enough, as group occupancy goes up, on average, so too does RevPAR," he said.
The trend mostly holds true when broken down by location type as well, with resort locations as the only outlier with a slight dip in RevPAR in the more than 50% group occupancy range. This could be contributed to RevPAR not accounting for ancillary spend outside of the room, Doyle said.
As for gross operating profit per available room, the trend between higher group occupancy and higher profitability is even stronger. When broken down by location type, each location, including resort, progressively produces a higher GOPPAR the higher the group occupancy percentage.
While there's a clear trend, this doesn't mean it's applicable to each and every hotel, Gulrajani said.
"I don't think there's a magic answer to what your optimal mix is that's the same for everybody," she said. "Every hotel is different. Every market is different. Resorts are different than a full-service hotel and an urban hotel is different than a suburban hotel."
Take Advantage of Food and Beverage
What each hotel can do, Gulrajani said, is start to establish a culture that thinks more about profits when it comes to banquet and catering and food and beverage with group business. This begins by thinking about how often menus are being updated and who's responsible for doing that task.
"The chef doesn't care what competition is doing. The chef doesn't care what the customer is saying. The chef doesn't care about what's happening in the real world," she said. "You need sales, events and even marketing to be involved in some of this, and maybe your revenue management team can help with this because ultimately you should ... look at what your competition is charging and use that to help guide your pricing as well."
In that same vein, Gulrajani said she's a strong believer in not publishing menu prices on a property's website or printed collateral to give more flexibility to change prices. When it comes to changing those prices, the best route to take is to set up a pricing model that updates pricing based on how menu items are performing.
Once that is complete, the strategy of prioritizing profits needs to be communicated to team members so they can push for certain items to sell based on their profitability.