The hotel industry is under pressure. Rising costs, from labor to utilities and insurance, are squeezing margins, while owners demand faster, more detailed answers —not only about what happened, but why, and what’s next.
Working with hotel management companies across the country from a back-office tech perspective, I’ve had a first-hand look at what some of the brightest and most forward-looking minds in the industry are doing. The companies pulling ahead are building a foundation of shared data and visibility that drives better decisions—shifting the focus from buying more tech to unifying their tech ecosystem, with a global vision of how everything works together.
What Top Management Companies Are Doing Differently
The top performers are either building or leveraging consolidated systems that scale, surface insights fast, and keep teams aligned.
Here’s what I see the best in the business doing to set themselves apart:
Building a Scalable Foundation First
The management companies scaling successfully right now aren’t relying on what used to work. One of the first things they’ve done is replace the patchwork back-office systems that were slowing them down with a system built to scale.
More operators are replacing legacy accounting setups that don’t integrate well, separate property and corporate data, require manual intercompany billing, and make month-end close a fire drill.
In contrast, they are building a foundation that can carry them into the future, choosing a true-cloud, integration-friendly, and hospitality-specific ERP & accounting system that centralizes property and corporate accounting, automates tedious tasks, provides portfolio-wide visibility, and has the advanced tech base to build upon.
Prioritizing Tech That Integrates Well
Instead of piling on software that only solves individual problems or relying on vendors that require heavy customizations to integrate, forward-thinking companies are choosing platforms that integrate seamlessly with the rest of their stack.
Integrations aren’t an afterthought—they’re an upfront requirement.
This does more than make life easier for finance teams; it means more automations, fewer labor hours, better ROI, less duplication, smoother onboarding for new properties, and cleaner collaboration across finance, ops, and ownership.
Setting Up Back-Office Automations
The companies scaling well are helping their teams work more efficiently, using automations to remove manual, repetitive, time-consuming tasks that slow teams down and drive-up labor costs, such as approval processes, intercompany entries, daily revenue imports, and bank reconciliations.
By automating those pieces, they’re reducing overtime, minimizing burnout, and giving teams time back to focus on strategy, analysis, and proactive decision-making. It’s not about working smarter—it’s about managing rising costs and building an operation that can scale easily.
Standardizing and Consolidating Data to See the Full Picture
We’ve seen companies managing 50 or more hotels come in with vendor naming inconsistencies across properties (such as Home Depot being entered in dozens of different ways), which makes it nearly impossible to analyze portfolio-wide spend, consolidate purchasing, or negotiate volume-based pricing. It also clutters financial reports and slows down decision-making.
Top-performing hotel management companies know this. That’s why they’re aligning data across their portfolio with a global chart of accounts and standardized vendor structures.
They are also selecting systems that support multiple divisions–hospitality, restaurants, entertainment– for true global insight.
Setting up unified visibility is how leading companies see, manage, and act on their financial data. It’s also giving them the control and confidence to move faster than their competitors.
Getting Richer Data, Digging Deeper for Smarter Decisions
The quality of data is not just about it being clean and standardized, but about the granularity a system can capture. Top hotel companies capture more detail to dig deeper and uncover what’s truly happening.
It’s the difference between spotting high MPOR and realizing it’s not a labor issue—it’s that housekeeping is stuck waiting on linens because of a laundry bottleneck. Or flagging rising supply costs and tracing it back to a non-preferred vendor used at just one property.
This kind of insight comes from advanced financial systems that surface the right metrics in real time—and make it easier to connect the dots between spend, staffing, and service delivery to see the full picture.
Adding a Secret Sauce
Standardization, automation, and real-time visibility into performance are quickly becoming the new baseline for owner expectations. Savvy management companies are already taking the next step, moving beyond functionality and focusing on the owner experience.
We’ve seen this take shape in owner-specific dashboards, real-time mobile access to financials, and custom reporting packages tailored for investor groups. These aren’t flashy add-ons—they’re strategic tools that deepen trust and enhance communication.
That’s the real differentiator. Top management companies are proactively managing relationships with owners, investors, and stakeholders to deliver more than a monthly report. They are delivering insight, transparency, and confidence.
Scaling Smarter, Not Slower
The hotel companies pulling ahead today aren’t solving problems with spreadsheets or bloated, disconnected tech stacks.
They’ve built centralized systems that give them clarity, control, and confidence at every level—from the front desk to the boardroom. They’re moving faster because they’re aligned. They’re making better decisions because they’re built on data they trust.
Scaling a portfolio doesn’t have to mean more complexity. But it does require the right foundation.
If you're serious about growing without sacrificing performance, it might be time to rethink the systems you’re building on.
Charles “Chip” Fritsch is COO and co-founder of Hotel Investor Apps Inc., makers of HIA, the only enterprise resource planning software purpose-built for hospitality.