04 – When Hotel Event Programming at the Pool Breaks the Staffing Model
The hotel booked a Saturday pool party for a corporate group. 180 attendees. 6-hour event window. The standard pool staffing model ran 2 lifeguards and 2 p...
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The pool bar and food service operation generated $186,000 in revenue across the operating season. The food and beverage director included the number in the seasonal amenity review as a positive contributor. What the review did not include was the labor cost of staffing the pool bar across the full operating season, including the hours when pool utilization was low and bar revenue was minimal but coverage was maintained. When the pool F&B labor cost was extracted from the broader F&B department budget and placed against the $186,000 in revenue, the operation had consumed $171,000 in direct labor. The net contribution before food cost was $15,000.
Hotel pool F&B operations are almost universally evaluated on gross revenue. The labor cost of generating that revenue is absorbed into the broader F&B department and never placed in ratio relationship with the pool outlet that produced it.
Hotel pool bar and food service labor is typically coded to the F&B department rather than to the pool operation. The server, the bartender, and the food runner who operate poolside during the operating season appear in F&B labor cost reports. The pool F&B revenue they generate appears in F&B revenue reports. The connection between those 2 numbers requires someone to deliberately extract the pool F&B labor from the broader F&B labor line and attribute it to the pool revenue it serves. That extraction almost never happens because the reporting structure does not facilitate it.
The financial consequence is a pool F&B operation that looks profitable in the aggregate F&B report because its revenue appears in the numerator while its labor cost is diluted across all F&B labor in the denominator. A hotel with strong restaurant performance can carry a money-losing pool bar without the pool bar’s financial condition ever becoming visible in any standard report.
“The F&B director reported pool bar revenue every month. Nobody had ever calculated what it cost to generate it because the labor was in the department total, not in the pool line.”
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Learn MorePool F&B operations in many hotels are staffed across a season that extends beyond the period when pool utilization justifies the coverage. A pool bar staffed from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM across a 20-week season carries 10 daily labor hours across 140 days. At a blended server and bartender rate of $24 per hour including tips and benefits, the daily labor cost of pool F&B coverage is $240. Across 140 days that is $33,600 in labor against a revenue base that fluctuates significantly across the season. During peak weeks the revenue easily covers the cost. During shoulder weeks it does not. The aggregate season number conceals the shoulder period financial condition entirely.
Tracking pool F&B labor cost against pool F&B revenue by week rather than by season produces a financial picture that the aggregate number cannot provide. Hotels that have built that weekly analysis consistently find that the shoulder period weeks at the beginning and end of the pool season generate pool F&B labor costs that the outlet revenue does not cover. The decision about whether to maintain full pool F&B service during those weeks, reduce to a limited offering, or eliminate pool-side service during low-utilization periods is a financial decision that requires the weekly cost-to-revenue view. That view is what hotel pool outlet labor cost and revenue tracking produces when pool F&B is separated from the broader F&B department for analysis purposes.
“Peak season the pool bar was profitable. Shoulder season it was not. We’d been averaging those 2 conditions together for years and calling the result a positive contributor.”
A pool bar generating $186,000 in seasonal revenue is generating a gross revenue number that leadership finds encouraging. A pool bar consuming $171,000 in direct labor against that revenue, before food cost, is generating a financial condition that the revenue number conceals. Hotels that build the pool F&B P&L, attributing all direct labor cost against all pool outlet revenue in the same calculation, make different decisions about pool F&B service hours, menu complexity, staffing model, and whether the outlet should operate on a full-service or a reduced-service basis during low-utilization periods.
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