About this ebook
Hotel Operations Financial Playbook shows general managers, department heads, financial leaders, commercial teams, chefs, engineers, people leaders, and other operators how to use financial evidence while the decision window is still open.
Across twenty-seven story-led chapters, the book connects demand, rate, labour, purchasing, kitchens, events, contracts, technology, maintenance, safety, future demand, forecasting, and financial culture to contribution, cash, capacity, asset condition, and owner value.
Readers learn how to:
· read the P&L without jumping directly to the most painful line and trace movement to the first operating driver;
· compare credible options and show where cost, work, cash, capacity, or risk transfers across the hotel;
· manage rooms, reservations, housekeeping, front office, F&B, kitchens, events, people, suppliers, contracts, systems, assets, safety, and future demand;
· protect guest, employee, safety, liquidity, control, asset, and future-demand guardrails while improving the financial result; and
· turn decisions into owned actions with authority, review dates, verification evidence, and learning.
The book uses The Granary, a connected composite hotel case, and the HLP Decision Loop to move from evidence to first driver, credible options, total-hotel impact, guardrails and authority, owned action, and verification.
It completes the eHMS Press hotel-finance series: Hotel Financial Reporting in Practice establishes the trusted reported fact; Hotel Budgeting and Forecasting in Practice builds and refreshes the plan; Hotel Operations Financial Playbook shows how operating leaders use both to decide.
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About the author
Manish Gupta, CA, is a hospitality finance executive, Chartered Accountant, teacher, and practitioner-author with more than two decades of finance leadership experience across hotels, mixed-use assets, real-estate-linked portfolios, and multi-entity operating groups in Asia, Africa, and India.
His work has included Group CFO and senior finance leadership roles, owner-side hotel review, strategic planning, budgeting and forecasting, working-capital management, ERP implementation, shared services, IFRS compliance, board reporting, hotel performance review, and operating-decision support. He has led finance across multi-property hospitality portfolios and worked in branded hotel environments, including Shangri-La Hotels & Resorts.
Manish writes and teaches from the practical working environment of hotel finance rather than from a purely theoretical accounting perspective. His work focuses on connecting financial information with better operating and investment decisions—turning reported results, budgets, forecasts, operating drivers, cash flows, and capital considerations into clear management action.
He is the founder of eHotel Management School (eHMS) and publishes professional hospitality finance and leadership resources through eHMS Press. His books are designed for hospitality finance professionals, hotel leaders, owners, students, and managers who want to understand not only the numbers, but the decisions behind them.
