Room Night Goals

For most American DMOs, it was the imposition of hotel room taxes that powered our founding and programming in the ‘80s and ‘90s. As we were running with “hotel money,” it was a fairly expected concept that our job would be to fill their hotels. And thus, our goals were their goals: Room Nights.

Room night production has been a hallmark of attempting to prove a DMO’s work for decades…but is it still relevant? As we’ve advocated for other, more impactful, measurements to be embraced, we always assure hoteliers in our sessions that Room Nights are still important. But, like everything else today, are they?

And, is it the all-too-common perception that Room Night generation is our primary goal that prevents community leaders from viewing DMOs in a more holistic manner; that we aren’t just tourism but the effective and logical marketers of the entire community to every consumer for every reason?

It’s easy for those with an agenda to say they don’t believe our Room Night numbers. And, ever since that Destinations International study identified that, on average, most group business was being undercounted by as much as 25% because of attendees booking outside of the block, do we? Room Night counts are like playing darts in the dark.

And now, some hotels are artificially removing rooms from inventory because they lack the workforce to provide basic customer services. Counting rooms in a post-plague world? Fuggetaboudit.

As an internal management tool, Room Nights, Occupancy and ADR can continue to provide some value. But, the time has come to cease and desist quoting them to anybody but someone from the lodging community. It’s time for new measures. Pronto.

I have some ideas…but I know it’ll never be a comprehensive list if we don’t come at this with a group effort. So here’s what I’m proposing. If you’ve been quoting your DMO’s impact in ways beyond the standard Room Night and Economic Impact measures, shoot us an email and we'll gather the tribe via Zoom in the weeks ahead to mold the new list.

And then, maybe sometime soon, we can leave Room Nights behind us for good.