Although marketing managers would appreciate financial data that more directly support their activities, the financial data generated by hotel accounting systems are aimed at apportioning department-related expenses and reflecting financial picture of overall operation. Given the industry’s increased focus on the profit generated by a given customer or market segment, a more useful form of financial data would allow hotel managers to apportion costs to given market segments. A survey of 143 controllers and 86 marketers shows the disconnect between the two professions. The bulk of marketers said that all company costs should be allocated among market segments, but most controllers took exactly the opposite view.
American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA), Uniform Systems of Accounts for the Lodging Industry,9threv.ed. (NewYork: AHLA, 1996).
2.
Cathy Burgess and Keith Bryant, “Revenue Management—The Contribution of the Finance Function to Profitability,”International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management13, no. 3 (2001): 144-150.
3.
Kate D. Dunn and David E. Brooks, “Profit Analysis: Beyond Yield Management,”Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly31, no. 3 (November 1990): 80-90.
4.
Fred F. Reichheld, The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1996).
5.
Kaj Storbacka, “Segmentation Based on Customer Profitability-Retrospective Analysis of Retail Bank Customer Bases,”Journal of Marketing Management13, no. 5 (July 1997): 479-492.
6.
Cooper and Kaplan, “Profit Priorities from Activity-Based Costing,”130-135.
7.
Carroll, “The Fallacy of Customer Retention,”15-20.
8.
Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, “Better Business—One Customer at a Time,”Journal for Quality and Participation21, no. 2 (1998): 30-37.
9.
Juha Salomaa, “Customer Analysis as a Foundation of Company Profitability” (2001), www.tuta.hut.fi/studies/Courses_and_schedules/Isib/TU-91.167/Seminar_papers/Salomaa_Juha.pdf.
10.
Robert C. Lewis and Richard E. Chambers, “Marketing Leadership in Hospitality-Foundations and Practices,” in Accounting and Finance for the International Hospitality Industry, ed. Peter Harris (Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1995).
11.
Robert S. Kaplan and V. G. Narayanan, “Measuring and Managing Customer Profitability,”Journal of Cost Management15, no. 5 (September-October 2001): 5-15.
12.
Dunn and Brooks, “Profit Analysis,”80-90.
13.
William J. Quain, “Analyzing Sales-Mix Profitability,”Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly33, no. 2 (April 1992): 56-62.
14.
Christopher W. Nordling and Sharon K. Wheeler, “Building a Market-Segment Accounting Model to Improve Profits,”Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly33, no. 3 (June 1992): 29-37.
15.
Breffni Noone and Peter Griffin, “Development of an Activity-Based Customer Profitability System for Yield Management,”Progress in Tourism and Hospitality Research4, no. 3 (December 1998): 279-292.
16.
Breffni Noone and Peter Griffin, “Managing the Long-Term Profit Yield from Market Segments in a Hotel Environment: A Case Study on the Implementation of Customer Profitability Analysis,”International Journal of Hospitality Management18, no. 2 (June 1999): 111-128.
17.
Adopted from Nordling and Wheeler, “Building a Market-Segment Accounting Model to Improve Profits,”29-37.
18.
Nina J. Downie, “The Use of Accounting Information in Hotel Marketing Decisions,” in Harris, Accounting and Finance for the International Hospitality Industry.
19.
George Foster and Mahendra Gupta, “Marketing, Cost Management, and Management Accounting,”Journal of Management Accounting Research6 (fall 1994): 43-77.
20.
For the profitability methods, see ibid.
21.
Ibid.
22.
For different approaches to customer-profitability measurements, see Mark Pickering, “Customer Profitability: The Approach Counts,”Charter60, no. 6 (July 1998): 32-35.
23.
Breffni Noone and Peter Griffin, “Enhancing Yield Management with Customer Profitability Analysis,”International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management9, no. 2 (September 1997): 75-79.
24.
Fred Selnes, “Analysing Marketing Profitability: Sales Are a Dangerous Cost-Driver,”European Journal of Marketing26, no. 2 (1992): 15-26.
25.
Malcolm Smith and Shane Dikolli, “Customer Profitability Analysis: An Activity-Based Costing Approach,”Managerial Auditing Journal10, no. 7 (1995): 3-7.
26.
Jorn Flohr Nielsen, Per Nikolaj D. Bukh, and Niels Peter Mols, “Barriers to Customer-Oriented Management Accounting in Financial Services,”International Journal of Service Industry Management11, no. 3 (2000): 269-286.
