This week, I am attending ALIS (The Americas Lodging Investment Summit) at LA Live in Los Angeles and I would like to share some insights from the show.  ALIS is the largest hotel investment conference in the world where industry leaders come together to share ideas and talk about challenges.

Most people here have guarded to strong optimism for 2012.  The majority of attendees and speakers believe we are at the start of a strong multi-year recovery and that demand will begin to outstrip supply this year.  Most are predicting stronger ADR (Average Daily Rate) and an increase in RevPar of 4% to 6%.  Although revenue projections are looking good, finance departments are still looking for ways to cut operating costs and make their organizations more efficient.  The goal is to put structural process changes in place now that will allow their companies to capture the coming growth in revenue without ballooning costs.

There are few finance driven initiatives with better cost containment metrics than Procure-to-Pay.  Many of the industry’s frontrunners have already chosen BirchStreet’s Procure-to-Pay solution as a finance driven cost reduction and control initiative.  If the leadership at ALIS is correct, this trend will increase in 2012 as more CFOs lead the P2P initiative into their organizations.