Cost Per Occupied Room (CPOR) Calculator

CPOR stands for Cost Per Occupied Room: the total cost of servicing one room for one night that it is occupied. It bundles the variable costs incurred only when a room is sold (housekeeping labour, guest amenities, laundry and linen, in-room utilities) plus a share of allocated fixed room-department costs. CPOR is the figure you subtract from your ADR to see the true contribution margin of each room sold.

Include every cost that scales with an occupied room: housekeeping labour and supplies, guest amenities (toiletries, coffee, water), laundry and linen replacement, and the room's share of utilities (electricity, water, heating). You can also allocate a portion of fixed room-department costs (supervision, systems) divided by the number of occupied rooms. Do not include costs that belong to other departments such as F&B food cost or front-office salaries unless you are doing full departmental allocation.

RevPAR is a revenue metric (revenue per available room); CPOR is a cost metric (cost per occupied room). They sit on opposite sides of the P&L. Used together they are powerful: ADR minus CPOR gives you the gross margin per occupied room, while RevPAR shows how much revenue each available room earns. Knowing both lets you set a floor rate below which selling a room actually loses money.

Your CPOR is the absolute floor for variable profitability: selling a room below its CPOR means you lose cash on every booking. In practice you set your minimum acceptable rate above CPOR plus a target margin, and reserve rates close to CPOR only for last-minute distressed inventory where any contribution above variable cost helps cover fixed costs. The break-even occupancy calculator uses CPOR directly as the variable cost per room.

Pure variable CPOR tells you the cash cost of one extra occupied room, which is ideal for last-minute pricing decisions. Adding a share of allocated fixed room-department costs gives you a fuller picture of what a room must earn to be sustainably profitable. The calculator lets you enter allocated fixed costs separately and divides them by occupied rooms so you can see both the lean and the fully-loaded view.