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Microlesson · 5-min read

Hotel Industry Costing — Equivalent Rooms

# Hotel Industry Costing — Equivalent Rooms Concept

## Cost Unit

For hotels, the cost unit is cost per room per day.

## Why Equivalent Rooms?

A hotel usually has multiple room categories (Normal, Deluxe, Super Deluxe), each priced differently. To allocate cost fairly across categories, we convert all rooms into a common base unit called the Equivalent Room.

## Equivalent Room Formula

$$\text{Equivalent Rooms} = \Sigma (\text{No. of rooms in category} \times \text{Price ratio of that category})$$

The Normal room is taken as the base = 1, and other categories are multiples (e.g., Deluxe = 2, Super Deluxe = 2.5).

## Steps to Calculate Cost per Room

Step 1: Convert all rooms into Equivalent Rooms using the price ratios.

Step 2: Cost per Equivalent Room =

$$\frac{\text{Total Cost}}{\text{Total Equivalent Rooms}}$$

Step 3: Cost of each category =

Cost per Equivalent Room × Price Ratio of that category.

## Note on 'Per Day'

If the total cost is for a year, divide by 365 (or operational days as given) to get cost per room per day.

Worked example

### Example 1

Example:

A hotel has:

  • 200 Normal Rooms (price ratio 1)
  • 100 Deluxe Rooms (price ratio 2 — double the normal)
  • 40 Super Deluxe Rooms (price ratio 2.5)

Total cost for the year = ₹10,00,000.

Step 1: Equivalent Rooms

CategoryRoomsRatioEquivalent Rooms
Normal2001200
Deluxe1002200
Super Deluxe402.5100
Total500

Step 2: Cost per Equivalent Room

$$= \frac{₹10{,}00{,}000}{500} = ₹2{,}000 \text{ per equivalent room}$$

Step 3: Cost by Category

  • Normal Room: ₹2,000 × 1 = ₹2,000 per room
  • Deluxe Room: ₹2,000 × 2 = ₹4,000 per room
  • Super Deluxe Room: ₹2,000 × 2.5 = ₹5,000 per room

(Above is for the period taken — divide further by no. of days to get per-day figure if required.)

⚠️ Common exam mistakes

  • Dividing total cost by total number of physical rooms instead of equivalent rooms
  • Treating all room categories as equally weighted
  • Forgetting to multiply back by the ratio to get the cost of higher-category rooms
  • Not converting yearly cost into per-day cost when the cost unit asked is 'per room per day'
Reference:
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