USE OF THE RESOURCE CONSUMPTION ACCOUNTING METHOD IN CUSTOMER PROFITABILITY ANALYSIS: A CASE STUDY OF A 5-STAR HOTEL

Abstract

This study was designed to illustrate the implementation of customer profitability analysis (CPA) using resource consumption accounting (RCA) for a hotel. A case study was performed at a 5-star hotel in Antalya, Turkey whose room capacity is 350. Interviews, direct observations, and document collection were used to obtain data while seeking to understand how the RCA method affects analysis results by applying the case study method for a hotel. Results indicated that some customer segments, which are unprofitable by the traditional costing method, are profitable while using RCA. The cost of idle resources devoted to activities in the hotel was also put forth with the case study. Utilizing these results, the hotel management is better able to understand the profitability of different customer segments and implement appropriate strategies. There are limited studies in the literature on profitability analysis in hotel companies and, to the best of author’s knowledge, no other research has used the case study method to analyze customer profitability with the RCA method in this field. Therefore, this paper contributes to the literature by analyzing the use of the RCA method for CPA in the real-life case of an actual hotel.