The Hotel Profit Audit
Spent right, not just spent less.
Real profit isn't about spending less. It's about spending right. Every pound your hotel puts out should be building the thing that makes you a destination, and the skill is knowing which pounds do that and which quietly don't. Sometimes that means investing more, not cutting.
Most hotel owners know where money is being spent. Far fewer know where it's being lost. The Profit Audit looks beyond bookkeeping and management accounts to find where profit, margin and opportunity are quietly leaking from the business. Led by John Evans, former Finance Director with deep hospitality experience.
In simple terms: where is money being left on the table?
The Profit Audit isn't bookkeeping, and it isn't a cost-cutting exercise. It's a commercial read of your hotel: where money is being lost, where a saving is quietly costing you more than it saves, and where spending more would actually raise your rate.
We read the numbers the way someone who has run a hotel reads them, then tell you which pounds to protect, which to cut, and which to spend more of.
Occupancy holds up.
The profit still isn't where it should be.
Most owners can see where the money goes. Far fewer can see where it's lost, or where spending more in the right place would pay them back. A profit and loss account tells you what happened. It doesn't tell you what a saving actually cost you once you count what it lost you.
Savings that quietly cost more than they save
OTA commission treated as fixed, not as a lever
Pricing that hasn't moved with the market
Spend cut in the one place a guest actually notices
Saved on postage. Lost the room.
A conference and business hotel in the Midlands had just finished a multi-million-pound extension: a striking new reception, spacious bedrooms with roll-top baths built into the room, a new lounge. A genuine step up. The sales and marketing team invited every corporate and agency contact they had to the grand opening. Confirmations came back thin, and nobody could work out why.
The reason was a finance controller who'd quietly decided that printing and posting the full guest list was too expensive, so only a portion of the invitations went out. The team spent the final week frantically phoning round to fill the room.
The real cost wasn't the postage they saved. It was the people who weren't in the room to see what their money had built, and what it said about the hotel that its own invitation felt like an afterthought.
A real case John worked on. Details kept general to protect the client relationship.
Real profit isn't about spending less.
It's about spending right. This is where your numbers and your category of one start pulling the same way. Led by John Evans, former hospitality Finance Director.
The Boardroom Hour
One pressing money worry, one hour with a former Finance Director. Raising your rate without losing occupancy, a seasonal cashflow dip, an F&B margin that's vanished, or the OTA commissions bleeding you dry. Send your figures ahead and John comes ready.
- Pre-call review of your latest P&L so we hit the ground running
- Straight answers on the problem keeping you up
- The first practical moves, not vague advice
- Fee 100% credited back if you upgrade to the full Profit Audit
The Profit Audit
A commercial read of your hotel, not just the books. Where money is quietly lost, where it's wrongly saved, and where spending more would actually raise your rate and your reputation. The full commercial picture, read by someone who knows hotels.
- Where profit leaks, and where false economies cost you more
- Gross operating profit protected, not just top-line revenue
- Channel mix, OTA dependency and pricing, examined
- The spend that lifts your rate, and the spend that's dead weight
Fractional Finance Director
A former Finance Director in your corner month after month, making sure every pound is working toward destination status. Not profit banked for its own sake, profit steered into the things that make you impossible to compare.
- The numbers read for what they mean, not just recorded
- Cashflow and seasonal dips, seen coming and planned for
- Every spend judged against the rate and reputation it buys
- Board-level expertise for a fraction of a full-time FD
Not sure where to start? Book a Destination Conversation. We work with a strictly limited number of hotels each year.
This isn't guesswork. I've balanced these books before.
John Evans spent his career as a Finance Director, including taking Sketchley Grange from a family-owned property into a four-star hotel, leisure and conference destination. He knows the difference between a P&L that looks fine and a hotel that's actually building value, and where the two quietly pull apart.
That's why the Profit Audit doesn't stop at the numbers. It asks what every pound is actually buying, and whether it's buying the right thing.
This isn't bookkeeping.
Bookkeeping tells you what already happened. The Profit Audit tells you what to do next: which spend to protect, which to cut, and which saving is quietly costing you more than it's worth.
Three arms. One firm.
Find the reason to choose you.
Make people feel it before they arrive.
Make sure the commercial model rewards it.
Tell me about your hotel.
You work hard, occupancy holds up, and still the profit isn't where it should be. Most owners know where the money goes. Far fewer can see where it's lost, or where spending more in the right place would pay them back.
This is a practical read of what your numbers actually mean, so you stop mistaking saving money for making profit. Tell me a little about your hotel, and if it's the right fit, John will be in touch to arrange a conversation.
