Josiah: So Sarah, we need our listeners to get to know you a little bit. This format, an audio conversation, actually might be good because you started in radio, is that right?
Sarah: I started in radio as a 16-year-old in high school. I decided that I wanted to be a radio journalist and I actually started with a Sunday evening radio show at my local hospital.
Josiah: Wait, at 16 a radio journalist? This is kind of unusual. What made you interested in that?
Sarah: I love the radio. I listen to the radio all day.
Josiah: Yeah, well, it’s funny you mentioned that because it’s the same for me. Most people, very few people listen to radio. But for me, I was always listening to radio. So there’s something about the audio format that stood out. But let me ask you the question again. I could edit. But okay, so I guess let me try at a different angle because you sort of have created media across so many formats. And I’m curious what format started out for you.
Sarah: I actually started in radio. As a 16-year-old in high school, I decided I wanted to be a radio journalist. I listened to the radio all day long when I was at home. And I wanted to be this radio journalist. I got a little show at my local hospital on a Sunday evening and I would do a mix of current affairs. I’d take in a few newspapers, I’d read the quirky stories out of the papers, I’d play some really nice, sort of laid-back, chill music. And I just absolutely loved it.
Josiah: I hope we can find some clips of that, because I want to hear this now. Amazing. So you have built an incredible career in journalism, in storytelling, and so many aspects of hospitality. And I wonder if you could share with our listeners a little bit of how you got involved in the world of hospitality and how you followed your journalistic instincts into the world of travel and tourism and hospitality.
Sarah: Yeah, so I went from wanting to be a radio journalist to wanting to be a travel journalist because I wanted to travel, I wanted to see the big wide world, and I got into hospitality like many people while I was still a student. I actually worked as a receptionist at this super cute family-run hotel in the Cotswolds. It was a medieval coaching inn, it had 40 rooms, and I was its receptionist slash night manager and I was about 18, 19. I would be in charge of this property after a certain time and I would have to go and lock it up. I loved hanging out in the kitchen with the chefs and I loved talking to the maids. I loved the whole environment back of house. It’s like its own little city. I loved it.
And then that was it. I was addicted to hospitality and I did get to go and be the travel journalist, but I became much more a business-to-business journalist rather than the consumer journalist that I had originally wanted to be.
Josiah: It’s a good distinction, though, because I think sometimes when people think about journalism and travel and hospitality, they’re thinking just about visiting a hotel. In people’s minds, that’s the job. It’s just visiting beautiful hotels and telling stories. There’s so much more to it. There’s the business of hospitality, which is fascinating. And it’s interesting to hear your own career experience. I had a somewhat similar experience where I worked on a small property at the California coast, and it’s that work behind the scenes of hospitality, the business of hospitality that really intrigued me because there’s still the element of engaging with people that’s so meaningful, but there’s a whole world behind the scenes that sometimes people overlook and is really interesting and powerful.
Sarah: It’s like the secret garden. You have privy to go into this secret world that the guest doesn’t see and I just loved it.
Josiah: Amazing. I’m going to include a link in the show notes to your LinkedIn. People can see some of the roles that you’ve held. It’s incredible. We had a chance to work together at another hotel technology company. You did incredible things there. And then now you and I both work at Actabl. Both of us joined somewhat recently. You even more recently than I. I’m curious for you. Why did you decide to join Actabl?
Sarah: It was the role. So my role at Actabl is Head of Editorial and that for me is the perfect role because I get to put my journalistic hat on. As you said, I’ve worked previously in marketing and I’ve juggled marketing and journalism for so many years, and now I have a job that combines both and lets me play to my strengths in both fields. So I get to look for the best stories, but then I have this amazing vehicle to get those stories out. And that was what attracted me, to be honest.
Josiah: Well, it’s awesome to have a chance to work with you again. I have been a big fan of your work for a long time. And so to have the chance to work together at Actabl is a lot of fun for me. I’m very interested. We’re going to talk a little bit about data today. We were talking before we went on air around… It’s funny because you and I interview so many people. It’s just funny when we’re doing this format. But I find the storytelling and the personal side, even just what you shared, is really important because hospitality is so human. And I think humans connect with story, right? People’s lived experiences. So it feels like the story and the human element is one type of story that can be told. And then there’s also sort of story that can be derived from data and observations of what’s going on. I think to your earlier point of being a journalist about the business of hospitality and travel, and I’m curious how you think about those two elements. I don’t know if they’re in tension, but it seems like two very different worlds. What’s the connecting thread, I guess, between them?
Sarah: They are two different worlds, but they definitely overlap. Data, the sort of solutions that we work with on a day-to-day basis, help hotels be more efficient. And that means that the frontline staff have more time to do the human element of their job. If they’re not spending their days doing data entry or doing those more manual and laborious tasks, then they can get out there and actually go and shake hands, go and smile, go and help, offer assistance. If you look at TripAdvisor, nobody ever mentions the property management system or the revenue management system when they do a review of a hotel. They’ll talk about Josiah, he gave me this amazing warm welcome and he knew that I wanted a mini bar that was only filled with Pepsi Max. So guess what I got? A mini bar filled with Pepsi Max. And it is those human elements.
But hospitality is busy. It is a frenetic pace. Everyone that’s worked in hospitality knows what it’s like. It’s really long, really intense. So what we do is we provide those solutions to just ease that pressure a little bit so that the people front of line can just spend that little bit more time delivering that smile, delivering that Pepsi Max.
Josiah: I love the example and it’s a powerful concept. I have to be candid with you though. I do feel having worked in hotel technology for some time, what you’re describing, it is very true, but I think it’s often talked about in the world of hospitality. And sometimes I get jaded thinking, okay, yes, technology should provide this. But what I found interesting recently is spending some time with people on the front lines of hospitality, back of house, people that are involved in the business. It’s reconnected me to this. What you’re describing is very real. And so I think for our listeners, maybe you’ve heard this claim that technology will free you up. But I guess from my own experience, if you’re getting kind of jaded with that, maybe return to the front lines or return to the people that are actually providing hospitality. And I found it to be very re-energizing to find, no, there’s actually something here. This isn’t just a marketing title.
Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. Andrew Arthurs, our COO, talks about back in the day when he was CIO at different hotel companies, he’d roll up his sleeves and he would go and do a 24-hour shift where he would work across all the different operations. He would be checking in guests and he would be carrying luggage. And it’s only when you’re actually at that front line that you can see the challenges that the staff face, but you can also hopefully identify where you can plug in a solution or just alleviate that a little bit.
And just going back to data, I know we’ve been talking a lot about the use cases for AI and things like that. And it can just get through things much quicker. It looks for patterns. It looks for anomalies. It can tell you if you’ve got all your mini bars plugged in and one of them hasn’t been serviced for 15 months, it will know that. Whereas you might have to manually remember room 204 needs a mini bar service. But if you’ve got it automatically programmed into a system, it can just ping you and then you can go and deal with it. And then the guest gets that cold Pepsi Max.
Josiah: Anything for Pepsi Max. I love it because data might seem dry until you start thinking about the use cases, right? And the things that are possible in the hospitality you can provide with data, which is probably a good segue into announcing today we are going live with hoteldata.com. This is something I want to talk with you a little bit about here now because I’ve been wanting to do this for years. I think you and I have worked very closely with different data sets and seen the power of data.
And I’ve always wanted to put together this public repository of what’s actually going on because it’s so easy in any hotel business to, well, it’s very common, unfortunately, to not even know fully in a hotel business what’s going on, let alone know what is going on outside of your hotel, outside of your hotel company at large. So there’s often just questions, what does good look like? Am I doing well? Am I not? And so I’ve been wanting to do this for years. We recently had the chance at Actabl to acquire the website or the domain hoteldata.com. We’ve been working on building this out and you and I have been speaking about this for months around all the things we could do around this. But I want to hear your take on some of the things that you’re excited about doing in this area, but more specifically through our new website, hoteldata.com.
Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. And today is the big day. We’ve launched HotelData.com and basically it’s a free resource for hoteliers who are looking for real actionable performance data to support them, especially right now. It’s budget season. So they are in the weeds with their figures. They’re looking at what they were expecting from 2025 and what they’re hoping to achieve from 2026. So it’s pretty data heavy and that’s not just about looking at financials, that’s looking at operational performance, the decisions behind that, because everything now leads back down to that bottom line. It’s much more about the bottom line and your gross operating profit than potentially the revenue or the price on the door.
Josiah: Interesting. Yeah, and all of these elements are important. You and I worked at a company that was very focused on revenue management. What we’re doing now at Actabl is looking at revenue and top line, but it’s looking at the whole picture. And to your point, the hotel industry is more and more focused on profitability, right? Because at the end of the day, that’s the measure of success for an operating business like a hotel. And that affects the real estate values and everything. It affects your ability to pay your people well, to reinvest in the property. Just everything comes back to profit. And so I think to that point you mentioned, right now at the time we’re going live here, many in the industry are beginning or kind of early in the budget planning process. You have been hard at work over the last weeks putting together a special guide that will empower people. And I wonder if you could describe a little bit about what this is.
Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. So the first guide that we’re going live with on hoteldata.com today is our budgeting guide for 2025-2026. So what is unique about this compared to other data resources out there is that we have what the hotels budgeted for 2025, what they’ve actually achieved in 2025. And if you take those two sets of data, and this is for the first half, you can see where those gaps are. And then you can try and play it forward to see what your expectations might be for 2025, the second half, and then help that to build your budget for 2026 and beyond. Now, 2025 has been a year of volatility. We should be used to it. We’ve had about five years of volatility on the bounce. But hoteliers, we’re optimistic.
So we came into 2025 looking at these figures and we were quite hopeful for quite a strong year. And the data tells us that there is a little bit of a gap between what was budgeted and what has been achieved, especially in terms of revenues. So the hotels can look at that. Now, if you’re looking at that in isolation, it’s just you and you’re looking at this gap. That’s pretty scary. But if you’re looking at the market and you can see that that gap is actually replicated elsewhere, then that’s quite reassuring. The gap is still there, but you know that it’s the market dynamics that are creating that and that’s reassuring. And it also gives you an idea of how to take your operations forward to close that gap.
Josiah: Yeah, certainly. I wonder if we could talk about a couple of these data points. We’re not going to go through the whole guide because people can find that at hoteldata.com. But a couple of the data points, maybe starting with the top line. As you mentioned, there’s something really interesting you discovered in looking at the data. And we should probably clarify the data set. What data set are we looking at? Where are these insights coming from? I wonder if you could briefly speak to that and then what you’re finding on the top line.
Sarah: Absolutely. So the data is aggregated from thousands of hotels that run on Actabl’s operations systems and business intelligence systems. So primarily Hotel Effectiveness and ProfitSword. And we bundle all of that data in and then we can take averages. We can benchmark off that.
Josiah: And it’s powerful because ProfitSword aggregates from hundreds of hotel technologies. So it essentially gives a complete view for our customers into what is going on in their business. So that’s great because with this data set, it’s all aggregated, as you mentioned, it’s across companies, it’s anonymized, right? So this is not a commentary around this company versus that company – but it shows what’s going on across sectors, across geographies. In terms of top line, there’s really interesting finding with regards to RevPAR versus ADR. And I wonder if you could describe a little bit of what you saw in the data here.
Sarah: Absolutely. So what we found in the data is, talking about those budgets versus the actuals, that there is actually quite a big gap between budgeted RevPAR and actually achieved RevPAR, to the point that on average for the first half of 2025, RevPAR budget versus actuals is down 15%. So we’ve actually achieved 15% less than we were hoping to achieve.
So on average, I think we’ve looked at $127 as RevPAR for 2025, and that is across all chain scales. So economy all the way up to luxury. But when you look at ADR, it’s relatively stable. It matches what we were expecting. And that is a very interesting story for us. So occupancy dropped, which meant revenue per available room dropped. Demand has softened and there’s lots of reasons for that. But the actual ADR, the average daily rate for the rooms, has remained stable. So that means that hotels are doing a great job in staying true to their value, to their brand, to what they are offering by staying on their rate.
Josiah: Which is really important for the health of the business because we’ve seen over past cycles of economic challenges, there’s been a rush to cut rates as a way to bring money into the business. But historically that has been very difficult to recover. And so it’s good to see a certain amount of discipline here. I think the demand softening is an interesting takeaway for me in the sense that… I mean I just love hotel marketing, kind of the commercial side of the business too. And so I think for our listeners thinking about how might we unlock new pockets of demand and drive more demand, because the discipline, I think… I’d be curious on your take. That seems like a good thing to see that, but there are also all these headwinds that the hotel industry’s faced, but demand is a challenge it seems and something for listeners to be thinking about.
Sarah: I think just some of the key markets dropped off a little bit this year. We’re looking at data for US hotels and the international market isn’t quite there. So you would argue that you should be focusing a bit more attention on your domestic travelers. And the beauty of the US, and obviously I’m not from the US, is that you’ve got a whole array of opportunity there, a whole array of experiences to be had all within the United States. So if you’re tapping into that domestic market, that might be where you can find those RevPAR gains.
Josiah: Interesting. Now, I think another element that was interesting is what you touched on earlier was profitability, right? And profitability has been under significant pressure for so many reasons. It is softer demand, as you alluded to. It is escalating costs. So many different things that make profits under challenge as an industry. Again, the data set we’re looking at is our customers. So I think I do want to call that out because we’re not commenting necessarily at this point on the industry at large on every element of this. But when it comes to profitability, there’s a lot of tools that our customers are using to understand profit and make sure that they can run as profitably as possible. So I think with that disclaimer, that context, what did you see with regards to profitability?
Sarah: So looking at gross operating profit, and this is the key measure for hotel performance. You’ve got your revenue that comes in, but then you have all your costs that go out and this is what’s left. We found that what hotels had budgeted for versus what they had actually achieved was pretty much on par. Hotels got it spot on for the first half of 2025, which means that despite the fact that maybe demand wasn’t quite there, they were able to be a bit more flexible in their operations to make up for that loss of demand, for that loss of revenue.
Josiah: Right. And for me, this just underscores the necessity of knowing what’s going on in your hotel business. So we have ProfitSword, which provides that visibility. Whatever technology you’re using, it will ingest all of the signals and you can see the performance of your business in detail so you can make decisions that help you run more efficiently, more profitably. It’s really key, I think, in an environment that is quickly changing. Like this is an area that you can control. So that really stood out to me. I guess, again, we’ll point people to hoteldata.com to get the full… There’s amazing charts in there, great analysis. But before we go, Sarah, is there anything else on your mind related to this guide or just in general, as you’ve been thinking about some of these themes that you want to leave our listeners with?
Sarah: I think we all know in hospitality right now that labor is key. It’s one of the biggest challenges in hospitality right now. One of the most positive things that I take away from the budgeting report that we’ve just put out is the fact that the GOP, the gross operating profit, has come in as expected. And that means that hotels have managed to be very strategic with some of their variable expenses. And a lot of that comes into housekeeping. So if your demand isn’t there, then you don’t need to be having so many people coming in and turning over rooms. But at the same time, if you have got the demand there, you want to make sure that that team is scheduled appropriately so you’re not paying huge overtime costs. Labor is the biggest challenge and managing it is… I mean, attracting it is hard. And another thing that tech does is that it does help you in attracting the new talent that’s coming through right now.
Everybody has a super computer in the palm of their hands and then they go to work and if they’re in hotels, they’re expected to not have a super computer in the palm of their hands. So let’s try and bridge that gap. Yeah, labor, it’s got to be tightly managed, smart scheduling, automation, that sort of thing. And clearly some hotels are really ticking those boxes.
Josiah: I’ll include some links in the show notes where people can learn more about this because you and I were speaking with a hotel leader recently that was talking about right sizing their labor. I think that phrasing and framing stood out to me because sometimes I go to an investment conference and you almost get the sense that labor, some would like labor to be a line item that goes to zero. It’s not about that. It’s matching exactly as you mentioned, the demand with the staff to serve. It’s good for everybody. It’s good for guests because we’ve probably all been in an environment where there’s way more guests there than staff and you’re waiting in a line, a queue to check in forever, or vice versa. And there’s just people standing around and it’s not great if you’re working there either. So it’s kind of a win-win scenario. It’s rare. It’s the biggest, typically the biggest controllable expense area for hotels and something to dig into. I think hopefully you and I will have a chance to chat again soon about this. I encourage everybody to go to hoteldata.com. Check this out. Just went live today.
Incredible work, Sarah. Thank you for all you do to educate all of us and thanks for taking time to chat today.
Sarah: Thanks Josiah, it’s been a pleasure.
Josiah: Cool, I’ll stop the recording.
