The Marketing Scorecard for Hospitality & Restaurants
This scorecard tracks whether a hotel or restaurant is earning its own guests or renting them from a third party. It covers direct bookings, cost per direct booking, occupancy or covers against your own history, reviews, guest email capture, local search, and event inquiries. The general manager runs it, and the front desk, host stand, events team, and marketing each own a row.
Why this scorecard exists
Why hospitality needs its own scorecard
Generic scorecards fail here because they treat a booking as a booking. A room night from an online travel platform and a room night from your own website look identical in the daily report, and they cost very different amounts. The same is true for a table booked through a reservation app versus a call to the host stand. If the scorecard does not split direct from third-party, the property can be full every weekend and still lose margin. Most hospitality reporting hides the one number that matters most.
Measuring this business is different because demand is seasonal, local, and reputation-driven. Comparing this week to last week tells you almost nothing. Comparing this week to the same week last year tells you a lot. Reviews land in public and compound, so review velocity and rating are marketing numbers, not just service numbers. And the guest is already in the building, which makes email capture and repeat visits cheaper than any ad you will ever buy.
When the scorecard is live, the Monday conversation changes. The general manager knows how many guests came direct and what each one cost. The front desk lead knows whether the review request went out and whether anyone answered the reviews that came in. The events manager knows the inquiry count and how fast the team replied. Every row has a name next to it, so when a number slips there is no debate about who looks into it.
The scorecard
11 numbers. Every one has an owner.
| Metric | What it means | How to set the target | Owner | Cadence | Red flag |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Direct booking share This is the margin number; a full house on commission and a full house you own are two different businesses. | The share of room nights or covers this week that came through your own website, phone, email, or walk-in rather than a commission-charging platform. | Take your trailing 8-week median share as the floor, then set a goal of moving it up a few points each quarter as direct booking work lands. Never set the target from a number you read somewhere else. | General manager | Weekly | Two consecutive weeks below the trailing 8-week median starts a check of the website booking path, rate parity, and which platforms grew. |
| Cost per direct booking It tells you whether the money spent to skip the middleman is cheaper than the commission you avoided. | Paid media spend plus booking engine or reservation software fees, divided by the number of direct bookings those channels produced. | Compare it to the average commission you pay per third-party booking from your own statements; if direct costs less than commission, hold it, and if it costs more, the target is to get under your own commission figure within a quarter. | Marketing lead | Weekly | Any week where cost per direct booking exceeds your average third-party commission per booking pauses the weakest campaign and checks booking tracking. |
| Occupancy or covers vs same week last year Hospitality demand moves with seasons and local events, so your own history is the only fair comparison. | Room nights sold or guests served this week, shown next to the same calendar week last year. | Set the target at last year's same-week number plus the growth you have planned for the year, adjusted for any known change like a renovation or a closed patio. | General manager | Weekly | Two consecutive weeks under the same week last year with no known cause, such as weather or a local closure, opens a demand review. |
| Third-party commission paid It is the real cost of rented demand, and it rarely shows up on any marketing report. | Total dollars paid this month to online travel platforms, reservation apps, and delivery services as commission or per-cover fees. | Track commission as a share of total revenue and use your trailing 3-month figure as the ceiling; the goal is for that share to fall while total revenue holds or grows. | Owner | Monthly | A month where commission grows faster than revenue moves budget from third-party listings toward direct booking work. |
| Website booking conversion Traffic you paid for is wasted if the booking path loses guests on a phone screen. | Completed bookings or reservations divided by visits to your booking or reservation pages. | Use your trailing 8-week median conversion as the floor, then set a target to tighten it a step at a time as you fix the booking flow. | Marketing lead | Weekly | Conversion below the trailing median while traffic holds steady triggers a test of the full booking path on a phone that same day. |
| New reviews per week Review velocity is what keeps you visible in local search and tells you the post-visit request is working. | The count of new public reviews across Google, TripAdvisor, Yelp, and any platform your guests use. | Set the target from your own review request system: a share of guests who receive the request, based on your trailing 8-week capture rate, then raise it as the request improves. | Front desk lead | Weekly | Any week under half the trailing 8-week median checks whether the review request is actually sending. |
| Trailing 90-day rating The lifetime rating hides a bad quarter; the trailing rating shows what guests think right now. | Your average star rating across new reviews from the last 90 days, not the lifetime average. | Your target is your own best trailing 90-day rating from the past two years, and the rule is that the current figure never drops below your lifetime average. | General manager | Weekly | Two reviews of one or two stars in the same week, or a trailing rating that drops two weeks running, means the GM reads every review aloud with the shift leads. |
| Review response time A fast reply shows the next searcher that someone is paying attention, and it defuses a bad review before it spreads. | Hours between a new review posting and a public reply from the property. | Start from your current median response time, then cut it in half each month until every review is answered within one business day. | Front desk lead | Daily | Any review unanswered past 48 hours is flagged in the daily huddle and answered before the shift ends. |
| Guest emails captured per week The guest is already in the building, and a repeat visit from your own list is the cheapest booking you will ever get. | New guest email addresses or phone numbers collected at check-in, reservation, the host stand, or Wi-Fi sign-in. | Divide emails captured by total guests served to get your capture rate, use the trailing 8-week median as the floor, and tighten it as staff make the ask part of the routine. | Front desk lead | Weekly | Capture rate below the trailing median for two weeks triggers a check of the front desk script and the sign-up form. |
| Local search actions For most properties this is the largest source of direct demand, and it can vanish overnight if a listing is suspended or edited. | Calls, direction requests, and website clicks from your Google Business Profile this week. | Track each of the three actions against its own trailing 8-week median and set targets to grow with your review velocity and photo updates, not against any outside figure. | Marketing lead | Weekly | Any of the three actions falling below its trailing median for two weeks starts a check of listing status, hours, categories, and photos. |
| Event and private dining inquiries These are the highest-value leads a property gets, and they are usually the slowest answered. | The count of new event, group, or private dining inquiries this week, and the median time to first reply. | Set the inquiry target from the same weeks last year and the reply target from your current median, cut in half each month until every inquiry gets a reply within one business day. | Events manager | Weekly | Any inquiry unanswered past one business day, or inquiries below the same-week-last-year count for two weeks, gets reviewed in the meeting. |
Targets are set from your own history, never from someone else's benchmarks. The builder does the arithmetic once you plug in your numbers.
The weekly review
Twenty minutes, same order, every week.
// 01
Direct booking share first
Start with the split. The general manager reads the share of rooms or covers that came direct this week, next to the trailing 8-week median. If it slipped, name the platform that grew before moving on.
// 02
Cost and volume against your own history
The marketing lead reports cost per direct booking against your average commission. The general manager reports occupancy or covers against the same week last year and notes any known cause, like weather or a local event.
// 03
Reputation and capture
The front desk lead reports new reviews, the trailing rating, response time, and emails captured. Any unanswered review or a review request that stopped sending gets assigned before the meeting moves on.
// 04
Local search and events, then decide
The marketing lead reads local search actions, and the events manager reports inquiry count and reply time. The meeting ends with no more than three actions, each with an owner and a date.
Where scorecards die
Mistakes we see constantly.
Counting third-party bookings as wins
A full house on commission is not the same as a full house you own. Split every booking by source before you celebrate the total.
Comparing to last week instead of last year
Hospitality moves with seasons, weather, and local events, so week-over-week swings are mostly noise. The same week last year is the signal.
Treating reviews as a service problem only
Reviews are the first thing a searcher sees before they ever reach your website. Velocity and response time belong on the marketing scorecard with a name attached.
Letting guest emails walk out the door
The guest is standing at the desk and nobody asks. Capture rate needs a row and an owner, not an assumption that the Wi-Fi form handles it.
Nobody owning the event inbox
Private dining and group inquiries carry the highest ticket and often wait days for a reply. Assign one owner and measure the reply time every week.
Other scorecards
Same discipline, different numbers.
By platform
By business type
Want it set up live in your dashboards?
We install scorecards on real data, wire the owners and alerts, and coach the weekly review. Scorecards and accountability is the service.
Questions we get
Straight answers.
Do we need a booking engine or point-of-sale integration to run this?
No. Start with weekly counts pulled by hand from your property management system, point-of-sale, or reservation platform. Automate the rows once they are stable and the team trusts them.
How do we decide what counts as a direct booking?
Your own website, phone, email, and walk-ins are direct. Anything that arrived through a platform that charges commission or a per-cover fee is third-party. Write the rule down so everyone counts the same way.
Should a restaurant track occupancy?
Use covers, or covers per available seat-hour if your system reports it. Hotels use occupancy and, if they want, revenue per available room. Either way, the comparison is against your own same-week history.
What if we are a single location with no marketing lead?
The owner or general manager takes the marketing rows. Eleven rows split across three people is still a 20-minute meeting. The point is that every row has a name, not that every name is a full-time role.
How does this fit with the Performance Audit?
The scorecard tells you which number is off, and the audit at /diagnostic tells you why. Many teams run the scorecard for a month, then bring the red rows to a diagnostic call.
A scorecard is only as good as the system feeding it.
Start with a diagnostic call. We will tell you which of these numbers you can trust today and what it takes to trust the rest.