Asset Management at a Crossroads

As originally seen in Hotel Business here: https://hotelbusiness.com/asset-management-at-a-crossroads/

Austin Segal, CEO of Singlepane

When it comes to advanced technology, hotel asset and portfolio managers are deeply under-resourced. At a time when technology is reshaping every aspect of hotel operations, asset managers themselves are challenged to find systems designed to address their specific needs and priorities. Until recently, that has been difficult.

While many other industry stakeholders—brands, operators, even managers of alternative asset classes—have invested heavily in technology, the tools made available to hotel asset managers have lagged.

From a reporting and analytics standpoint, owners have always been the shortest leg in the industry’s “three-legged stool” of brands, operators and owners. Owners disconnect from source systems, lack of ownership of the tech stack and portfolio diversification across multiple brands and operators have made innovation in the asset management space slow. The data-driven insights needed to get a clear picture of property and portfolio performance are not available on cobbled-together static spreadsheets and email chains.

Hotel owners comprise a diverse ecosystem: ranging from family offices with a few properties, to private equity fund with dozens, to REITs with hundreds. Each faces unique pressures. Some must answer to institutional investors. Others are entrepreneurs managing their portfolios for rapid growth and sale. What they all share is a dependence on incomplete, scattered information to manage their businesses. With operating pressures rising on the one hand and legacy technology lagging on the other, innovation will require a new playbook, and new technology.

Data is not the problem

The pain point is not a lack of data. P&Ls, STR reports, forecasts, demand outlooks and market intelligence, guest reviews, rate-shopping feeds, a myriad of hotel and operator level BI systems —these collections of data are all available to asset managers. The problem is fragmentation and delivery. Information lives in silos, delivered in different formats, and is often outdated by the time it lands in an inbox. Comparisons across hotels, brands or markets are challenging if not impossible. Portfolio aggregation for investor and stakeholder reporting can be a painful exercise of copy-and-paste gymnastics.

At the same time, brands and operators have built and invested in sophisticated platforms for everything from revenue management to financial analysis. Yet for asset managers—the owners’ representatives—the toolset is still a patchwork of reports, spreadsheets, emails, phone calls and trackers. Many owners have tried “build-it-yourself” reporting and BI solutions or bolt-on tools designed for other industry stakeholders, other asset classes or other industries entirely—yet these often fall short due to the unique operating characteristics and data of hotels. Owners also often find that building their own solution was more expensive, time consuming and difficult to maintain than they estimated, with time and capital demands that go unrewarded.

Beyond business intelligence

The technology landscape for asset managers focuses on operational and financial business intelligence and reporting, and that is critically important. But BI tools are only one piece of the puzzle.

Owners need something more comprehensive and integrated: a data-driven resource that brings financial reporting, capital expenditure tracking, contract management, debt service management and deal flow management together in one place.

Consider capital expenditures. For decades, the process has been chaotic: a GM calling about a broken boiler, an urgent email about luggage carts, a point-in-time CapEx tracker with endless version control and conflict issues. Decisions often get made in isolation, records can be incomplete and visibility is poor. Or take contract oversight. From management agreements and franchise terms to elevator maintenance and pest control—millions of dollars are embedded in these documents, and yet they often live locked in shared drives or static trackers, forgotten about until they expire. Bringing transparency and automation to this area alone can have outsized financial impact.

We don’t need better point solutions. We need a comprehensive asset management platform—one designed for the unique rhythms and realities of hotel ownership.

The benefits of unifying all aspects of hotel ownership are not just convenience and efficiency. Themove toward a consolidated asset management system is also a critical first step in preparing owners to harness the evolving power of AI. Software providers that can unify siloed data and information, streamline workflows, create portfolio visibility and accurately capture industry semantics with the right metadata will be indispensable partners in an AI-driven future.

Building a new model

A new kind of platform that can deliver unified portfolio and asset management, with the right data to the right user at the right time is the order of the day—a platform built by owners, for owners and focused on actions and outcomes. That means technology that aligns with ownership goals, anticipates needs and can evolve alongside the portfolio. It means giving a three-person private equity team the same visibility and control as a billion-dollar REIT.

At a time when hotel asset managers are being asked to deliver more insight, more accountability, and more value than ever before, we need a new set of tools that go beyond manual processes and fragmented systems. Asset management is central to investment value creation and it deserves purpose-built technology that delivers all the critical data in a single place, with actionable recommendations.