Hospitality
Alderbrook Hotels
A hotel group reads seasonal cash a quarter ahead and keeps working capital where the guests are.
Group
26 entities · 13 banks · 4 currencies
Country
United States
Backtest
Week 9 landed 0.8 % below P10 · flagged 6 days ahead
The setup
Alderbrook Hotels owns or manages twenty-six properties across the United States, Canada and Mexico, from ski lodges to city-centre business hotels. Their seasons are opposed: the lodges fill in January while the city hotels slump, and the reverse holds in July. Thirteen banks serve twenty-six entities, mostly because each property was acquired with its bank.
Darnell Whitaker’s challenge was less the forecast than the redistribution. Cash piled up in summer at the city hotels, and a seasonal credit line paid for the lodges’ shoulder months. The treasury team drew on it by habit, not because the cash really was missing.
Backtest · forecast vs actual · 13 weeks
$3.87M
Seasonal credit line left undrawn after the first winter
9 of 26
Properties on a weekly sweep instead of an ad hoc one
0.7 weeks
Average lead time gained on low-point warnings
“
A hotel group is thirty small businesses with the same seasons. Headroom lets me see which ones pay for the others in each season and plan around it.
Darnell Whitaker
VP Finance
What changed
With Headroom, the seasonal curves of each property are visible next to each other in the same cone. In the first winter, the group saw that its city hotels could cover the lodges’ pre-season payroll through a series of intercompany loans, and left $3.87M of the credit line undrawn. Nine properties now sweep weekly on rules the team wrote and the treasurer approves.
One week did not fit. In week 9 the actuals landed 0.8 % below the low edge of the range, after a ski lodge refunded a cancelled group booking; the floor alert had flagged the account six days earlier, so the transfer was already planned. Warnings on low points now arrive 0.7 weeks earlier on average, and Darnell shows that miss in his board pack next to the hits.
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