Asset Intelligence is a platform where users can evaluate productivity and efficiency of individual properties, and derive enhancement strategies to optimize business plans. Therefore, it can be used as a basis for decision-making regarding transactions, investments, financing, and work-out.
Asset Intelligence is subdivided into Asset Positioning and Business Planning.
Asset Positioning allows users to identify opportunities to enhance productivity and efficiency through a comparative analysis of an individual property’s performance against a custom competitive set. The users can establish and optimize a business plan to with Business Planning, based upon the AI-generated forecasts for key performance indicators at a competitive set level.
1. Asset Registration
To use the Asset Intelligence service, a user must register the subject property, its performance data to be analyzed and a competitive set of properties. The properties can either be selected from existing properties in the database or register from scratch in case of a development or remodeling projects.
When registering an existing property, a user can search by name or select from the list sorted by region and property type. In this case, the basic information such as the size and age of the property are automatically extracted and the user do not need to type them in. However, if the user registers a property to be developed or remodeled, the user has to type in the basic information items.
After registering the property, the user must provide the performance data such as revenue and expense for a year of choice. The data can be provided either through Easy Mode or Professional Mode. Although the accuracy of analysis is better with more entries, we found that there are likely to be more errors with more items. Therefore, we decided to block access to Professional Mode at the moment.
When providing the performance data of a property through Easy Mode, the required items are subject year, operating days, occupancy, room revenue, total revenue, number of employees, annual labor costs, indirect expense, undistributed expense, total operating expense, total assets, depreciation and equity, the definition of each can be referred to in the Lodging Industry Glossary. A deluxe member has an option to use the estimates by the AI algorithm, which can save the user’s time significantly.
Once the data entries are provided, a competitive set of properties must be put together. A competitive set is to include up to 10 properties, excluding the subject property. A standard member will be provided with a competitive set where all of 10 properties are selected automatically by the AI algorithm, while a deluxe member can directly select up to five properties. The competitive properties shall be selected from existing properties. If selected directly, the process is the same as registering an existing property as the subject property.
However, the competitive set may not be established as requested, if the database does not provide statistical data for more than or equal to 50% of the automatically selected competitive properties. For example, in the case of standard members, competitive set will be established as requested only if the database provides statistical data for more than or equal to 5 properties. If a deluxe member directly selects three properties, a competitive set will be established only if the database provides statistical data for more than 4 properties out of 10 automatically selected properties. The probability of establishing a competing set as requested will be higher if the range of competitive region and type is.
A single user can register multiple properties, and a single property can have performance data sets and competitive sets.
2. Asset Positioning
Once the asset registration process is completed, a user can generate a Positioning Dataset. The user must select the subject property out of registered assets and select a competitive set out of the list registered under the subject property.
When a subject property and a competitive set are selected, a user must name the dataset to be generated and generate a Positioning Dataset.
Once a Positioning Dataset is generated, six tabs will show up on the screen, just like a Time-series Dataset and a Snapshot Dataset.
The first tab, Overall Summary, will provide an overview of the subject property and the competitive set, and a one-page summary of comparative analyses for the subject properties against the competitive set as well as against the relevant submarket, visualized as tables or graphs with analytical comments. Analytical comments summarize a long-term trend and a recent three-year trend for each item. The five remaining tabs will provide visualized tables or graphs of detailed items, for the period from 2005 to 2019, relevant to ones in Overall Summary. The tabs are composed of Time-series Index, Supply & Demand, Price & Revenue, Operating Expense, Profit and Value Indicators. In principle, the tables and graphs in the Positioning Dataset are the same as ones in a Time-series Dataset and a Snapshot Dataset. The difference is that the Positioning Dataset shows the positioning of the subject property against the competitive set.
Hotelysis is currently in the process of developing a forecasting algorithm for key indicators at an individual property level, and the Business Planning service will be available once equipped with the algorithm. In the meantime, we will work on improving the interface of Professional Mode for asset registration and further develop the interface for the users to customize data items to be analyzed in Asset Positioning.