Most monthly P&L reviews spend too much time on the numbers and not enough time on what they mean. A GM who understands what each line is actually measuring — not just the definition, but the story behind the variance — runs a tighter operation and has much better conversations with the ownership group and the corporate office.
This isn't a glossary. These are ten numbers I'd want any GM to be able to speak to fluently, with context, before the Monday call.
1. Occupancy vs. budget — but specifically which nights
Occupancy as a monthly average tells you almost nothing. What matters is which nights ran over or under, and why. A month where you ran 92% on the leisure weekend and 54% on Tuesday–Wednesday is a completely different operational story than a month where you ran a flat 72% every night.
Before the monthly review, know your highest and lowest three nights by occupancy and have a one-sentence explanation for each. That's the context the number needs.
2. ADR variance — and whether you earned it or it came to you
ADR above budget is good. But how you got there changes the operational interpretation. ADR that beat because a compression event drove rates up is different from ADR that beat because the revenue manager held rate on transient and displaced some group. Both are favorable. Both require different things from operations planning.
The question to ask: was ADR above budget because demand was stronger than forecast, or because we made better rate decisions than budget assumed?
3. RevPAR — the one number ownership actually anchors on
Revenue Per Available Room is the number ownership groups track most closely because it captures both occupancy and rate in one figure. A RevPAR miss is harder to explain away than an ADR miss or an occupancy miss individually — it says that after everything, the rooms didn't generate what they were supposed to.
Know your RevPAR index relative to comp set if you have STR data. RevPAR above budget but below index means you left money on the table relative to the market even while beating plan. That's a useful nuance for the revenue management conversation.
4. Rooms Revenue vs. Total Revenue — the mix question
The gap between rooms revenue performance and total revenue performance tells you whether ancillary revenue is keeping up. A property that beats rooms revenue but misses total revenue has an F&B, parking, or ancillary problem. A property that misses rooms but hits total is capturing more spend per guest than expected — which is operationally positive but masks the rate/occupancy challenge.
Know the split before the call. "We beat on rooms but missed on F&B by $30K — here's why" is a complete sentence. "Total revenue was a little off" is not.
5. Rooms Cost Per Occupied Room (CPOR)
CPOR is the cost to service one occupied room: housekeeping labor, amenities, laundry, guest supplies. It's the number that tells you whether rooms operations are efficient at the current occupancy level.
CPOR goes up when occupancy drops (fixed costs spread over fewer rooms) and should go down as occupancy rises. If CPOR is rising when occupancy is rising, something in variable costs is out of control — usually labor. Compare it to the same period last year and to budget at the actual occupancy level, not the budgeted occupancy level.
6. Labor as a % of revenue — by department
Payroll is almost always the largest controllable expense on the P&L. Looking at total labor as a percentage of total revenue gives you a directional read. Looking at labor as a percentage of revenue by department — rooms labor as % of rooms revenue, F&B labor as % of F&B revenue — gives you an actionable read.
A property where labor is 34% of total revenue but F&B labor is 42% of F&B revenue has a specific problem in the outlet, not a portfolio-wide labor efficiency issue. The treatment is different.
7. GOP / House Profit — and what's above and below it
Gross Operating Profit (also called House Profit) is the headline number for operational performance. It's what's left after departmental revenue minus departmental expenses minus unallocated overhead (A&G, Sales, IT, R&M, Utilities). Management fees and property-level fixed costs come after it.
Know what's above it (your revenue lines and department costs) and what's below it (fees, taxes, debt service) before the review. If GOP missed, was it a revenue problem, a department cost problem, or an overhead problem? Those have different owners and different solutions.
Also: GOP is the metric most commonly misquoted in ownership presentations. Make sure you and ownership are using the same definition. Some operators run to EBITDA. Some ownership groups care about Net Operating Income. Know which one the conversation is anchored on before you start talking about variances.
8. Flow-through — or flex, depending on which direction revenue went
If revenue beat budget, flow-through measures how much of that upside made it to GOP. If revenue missed budget, flex measures how well the team pulled costs down in response. Both are a ratio of profit variance to revenue variance.
The useful version of this number is the adjusted version — with one-time items, timing differences, and unbudgeted costs added back to show what operations actually did on the revenue it generated. Raw flow-through without adjustment often misleads. See the full flow-through guide for the complete framework.
9. PTEB as a % of gross payroll
Payroll Taxes and Employee Benefits are the invisible labor cost. Most budget models assume a blended PTEB rate — often 22–27% of gross wages — but the actual rate varies based on tenure, benefits enrollment, part-time vs. full-time mix, and seasonality. When PTEB comes in above budget, it's usually one of three things: benefits enrollment higher than expected, payroll taxes hitting a reset (FICA resets in Q1), or a labor mix shift toward full-time that increased benefits costs.
Know your PTEB rate for the month and whether it's consistent with the prior period. A swing in PTEB without a corresponding swing in gross wages is a flag — either something's miscoded or the benefits cost structure changed.
10. The number that's just wrong
Every month, there is at least one line item on the P&L that doesn't make sense — something that's 200% of budget, or negative when it should be positive, or missing entirely. This is often a posting error, a timing difference, or a data integration issue, but it can also be a legitimate operational problem that nobody caught.
The GM who walks into the Monday call having already identified the line that looks wrong, verified whether it's a real expense or a coding issue, and has an explanation ready — that GM builds credibility fast. The one who gets surprised by the question doesn't.
Make it a habit: before every monthly review, spend 15 minutes looking for the thing that doesn't look right. Nine times out of ten you'll find it before anyone else does.
Related: If some of these numbers are hard to trust because the data behind them is unreliable, that's a systems problem before it's a reporting problem. Why Hotel Systems Break covers where those data integrity issues typically come from.