How Do You Measure the ROI of a Crew Lodging Program?

Measure the ROI of a crew lodging program on total cost per room night, not on the room rate. Add five lines for each job: the rate paid against the published rate, the lodging tax actually charged, the coordinator hours spent booking and changing rooms, the accounts-payable hours spent reconciling folios, and the crew hours lost driving between the hotel and the site. Compare that total before and after the program, per room night, and you have a number a finance team will accept. The room rate is usually the line people quote and often the smallest one that moves.

What should a crew lodging ROI report include?

A report that survives a CFO's questions has the same five lines every month, each with its own source:

• Rate. The nightly rate paid against the property's published rate for the same nights. This is where the headline saving lives; through Globeo's 30,000+ partnered hotels it can reach up to 50% off published rates.
• Tax. Lodging tax charged against lodging tax owed. Many states exempt stays past 30 consecutive nights, and a crew that checks out and back in can reset that clock without anyone noticing.
• Booking time. Coordinator or superintendent hours spent finding rooms, making changes and answering calls from the front desk.
• Reconciliation time. Accounts-payable hours spent matching folios to jobs and cost codes.
• Distance. Extra drive time between the hotel and the site, multiplied by the number of workers and the loaded hourly cost.

Divide each line by room nights. Total spend rises and falls with headcount; cost per room night is the figure that shows whether the program is working.

How do you calculate the hidden costs of crew lodging?

Take a 20-person crew on a 45-night job: 900 room nights. The figures below are illustrative, chosen to show the method; use your own.

• Rate: $10 a night below what the crew would otherwise pay saves $9,000.
• Tax: at a combined lodging tax of 13% on a $120 room, tax is about $15.60 a night. In a state that waives the tax back to the first night once a stay passes 30 days, keeping all 20 stays unbroken is worth roughly $14,000. Lose that to a single checkout and the rate saving is gone.
• Distance: a hotel 20 minutes further from the site costs 40 minutes a day per worker. Across 20 workers and 45 days that is 600 crew hours, more than the rate saving at almost any loaded wage.
• Admin: if each of 30 changes during the job takes a coordinator 20 minutes, that is 10 hours, before anyone in AP opens a folio.

The pattern holds across most crew jobs Globeo books: tax and distance are bigger levers than rate, and they are invisible in a report that only tracks average daily rate. For how the 30-night rule works and what breaks it, see whether crews pay hotel tax after 30 nights.

How do you measure ROI from hotel reshopping?

Reshopping means checking a booked rate again before or during the stay and rebooking if the price has dropped. Its ROI is simple to compute: (original rate minus new rate) multiplied by the nights remaining, minus the cost of making the change. Report it as a separate line, with the number of rebookings attempted and the number that actually saved money.

For a business traveller on a refundable two-night booking, the cost of the change is close to zero, so almost any drop pays. For a crew it rarely is. Moving a crew mid-stay costs a check-out and check-in for every worker, can put them in a hotel further from the site, and, past day 30, can restart the lodging-tax clock. A $6 drop on 15 remaining nights saves $90 a room; one reset tax exemption can cost several times that. The rule most crew programs settle on: reshop before arrival, rarely after it.

Is outsourcing crew lodging worth it?

It is worth it when the hours it removes cost more than the fee it adds. Count three things for the last full quarter: coordinator hours spent on lodging, AP hours spent on lodging folios, and the number of separate hotel invoices paid. A common sign that the work has outgrown the people doing it is a superintendent taking front-desk calls at night, or month-end reconciliation running to days rather than hours.

With Globeo the comparison is easy to set up: a negotiated rate plus one flat per-room-night fee, no volume commitment, no room block to fill, a 24/7 concierge handling changes, and every room night on one cost-coded invoice. Put the fee in as its own line in the report, so the saving is shown net of it.

How do you present travel program ROI to executive stakeholders?

Executives want one number, one trend and one decision. Three habits make a crew lodging ROI report land:

• Lead with cost per room night, all-in, against the same quarter last year. One figure, normalised for headcount.
• Show the five lines as a bridge from the old cost to the new one, so rate, tax, admin and distance each get their share of the credit.
• Tie it to jobs, not to travel. Report lodging cost as a share of each project's budget. A superintendent's lodging line means more to an operations VP than an average daily rate does.

Keep the method stable from quarter to quarter. A report whose assumptions change every time is a report nobody trusts. Globeo's Stay History reports give the room-night, rate and tax data by job, which covers the first two lines without a spreadsheet. You can book a demo to see one.

Common questions

What is the best metric for crew lodging ROI? All-in cost per room night: rate, tax, booking and reconciliation time, and extra drive time, divided by room nights. It stays comparable as crew sizes change, which total spend does not.

How do you calculate savings on hotel rates? Compare the nightly rate paid with the property's published rate for the same dates, then multiply the difference by room nights. Report it net of any program fee so the figure is not overstated.

Does hotel reshopping save money for crews? Before arrival, often. After the crew has checked in, rarely: a move costs check-in time, can add drive time, and past 30 nights can restart the lodging-tax clock that would otherwise exempt the stay.

How often should a crew lodging ROI report be run? Monthly for the five lines, quarterly for the executive summary. Monthly catches a broken tax exemption or a hotel too far from the site while there is still time to fix it.

Do per diems belong in a lodging ROI report? No. Per diems for meals and incidentals are set and paid by the employer, separately from the room booking. Globeo does not manage, calculate or reimburse them, so keep them out of the lodging figures.