Many hotel operating metrics do not have a single meaningful industry-wide target because property types, building ages, equipment, climate, occupancy, staffing, and service levels vary considerably.

Hotels can instead establish internal baselines using their own historical performance. Multi-property organizations can also compare similar properties or groups of comparable assets.

Over time, these internal benchmarks can reveal whether performance is improving, declining, or deviating significantly from comparable properties, even without a universal external standard.