Updated 7 October 2026 · Reading time: 8 minutes
Why a group's properties are not comparable on their own
In a group with two or more hotels, a campsite or a restaurant, part of the costs sits in one company or one property but serves all of them. Administration is at head office, the maintenance technician moves between sites, one water meter serves two buildings.
The result is that one property looks more profitable only because it does not carry the costs it uses, and another looks worse because it carries them all. Without shared rules, comparing property GOP or deciding where to invest becomes a matter of opinion. Allocating shared costs gives each property its share, using written criteria that are the same for everyone.
Which costs are shared
- Central management: group general manager, revenue manager, controller.
- Administration and accounting: the admin office, payroll processing, general professional fees.
- Centralised purchasing and warehouse.
- Central reservations, sales and marketing: call centre, website, campaigns, trade fairs.
- A shared maintenance team.
- An in-house laundry serving several properties.
- Utilities on shared meters: electricity, water, gas.
- IT systems: booking and accounting software licences, network, support.
- Staff moving between properties: housekeepers, cooks, reception staff on loan.
Allocation drivers
Each shared cost is allocated with a driver, a measure that explains how much each property uses that service. The right driver is the one closest to what causes the cost and that can be measured easily every month.
| Shared cost | Typical driver |
|---|---|
| Central management, administration | Revenue, or rooms or units available |
| Payroll processing and HR | Number of employees or payslips |
| Accounting, purchasing | Number of invoices or transactions recorded |
| Central reservations, sales and marketing | Rooms revenue, or occupied rooms |
| Shared maintenance | Hours worked per property (from job sheets), or square metres |
| Laundry | Kilos washed or occupied rooms |
| Utilities on shared meters | Sub-meter readings; failing that, square metres or occupied rooms |
| IT systems | Rooms or units available, or number of workstations |
| Shared staff | Hours worked at each property |
Before allocating, assign directly everything you can: if a cost concerns only one property (a technician's invoice, the payslip of someone who works only there), it goes to that property. Allocation is only for what is genuinely shared. The fewer costs you allocate, the more each property's figures reflect the decisions of the people who run it.
For groups with both hotels and campsites, available rooms and available units are not equivalent: it is better to use revenue or hours, or to weight the units explicitly.
Principles to follow
- Document the criteria: a short document stating, for each shared cost, which driver is used and where the data comes from.
- Apply them consistently, month after month, even when the result is unwelcome.
- Review them once a year, at budget time, if the organisation has changed (a new property, an outsourced laundry).
- Keep the management view separate from the statutory one: the allocation is for reading the operation and does not in itself change the companies' statutory accounts.
Intragroup recharges
When shared costs are borne by one company and used by other companies in the group, they are usually recharged. The documented allocation is the calculation basis for these invoices: it states how much to charge each company and why, with verifiable data.
The management consolidation
A management consolidation is the group view built on management data, not the statutory consolidated financial statements. It is built in two steps:
- The same USALI scheme for every property, with the same chart-of-accounts mapping and the same drivers, as described in the USALI guide.
- A group view that adds up the properties and eliminates intragroup items: the revenue of the company that recharges and the cost of the company that receives the invoice cancel out, so the group sees only revenue and costs with third parties.
This is also where differences between the companies' books come to light: different charts of accounts, different software, costs recorded in different months. Mapping each chart of accounts once to the same scheme, and agreeing a monthly closing date, solves most of them.
With a common scheme, properties are compared on the same indicators: GOPPAR, GOP margin, cost per occupied room (CPOR), payroll as a share of revenue and, for campsites, revenue per available unit.
An example: two hotels and €120,000 of central administration
Illustrative example, invented figures. A group has two hotels. Hotel A has 80 rooms and €2,400,000 of revenue; Hotel B has 40 rooms and €3,600,000 of revenue. Central administration costs €120,000 a year. Before this cost, Hotel A's GOP is €600,000 and Hotel B's €1,080,000.
| Hotel A | Hotel B | Group | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rooms | 80 | 40 | 120 |
| Revenue | €2,400,000 | €3,600,000 | €6,000,000 |
| GOP before central costs | €600,000 | €1,080,000 | €1,680,000 |
| Share by rooms (2/3 and 1/3) | €80,000 | €40,000 | €120,000 |
| GOP, allocation by rooms | €520,000 (21.7%) | €1,040,000 (28.9%) | €1,560,000 (26.0%) |
| GOP per room, by rooms | €6,500 | €26,000 | €13,000 |
| Share by revenue (40% and 60%) | €48,000 | €72,000 | €120,000 |
| GOP, allocation by revenue | €552,000 (23.0%) | €1,008,000 (28.0%) | €1,560,000 (26.0%) |
| GOP per room, by revenue | €6,900 | €25,200 | €13,000 |
Group GOP does not change: €1,560,000 in both cases. What changes is how each property reads: with the rooms driver, Hotel A carries €32,000 more cost and its GOP margin drops from 23.0% to 21.7%. Neither criterion is wrong. What matters is choosing one for a reason (here: does administration work more for the larger hotel or for the one with higher revenue?), writing it down and sticking to it.
Where to start
I work from the exports of the software each company already uses, even when they differ. The first step is a list of shared costs and of the data available to allocate them. The free diagnostic check-up has a section for groups; the service is described on the Services page. If the group combines different kinds of property, such as hotels and campsites, the common scheme is what makes them comparable. For properties on Lake Garda there is a dedicated page.
The first meeting is free: at your premises if the group is in Lombardy, online via Microsoft Teams in other regions. You can write to me here.
Source: HFTP, Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry, 12th Revised Edition (usali.hftp.org).