Excel Skills for Hospitality Jobs: Hotels and Restaurants

The Excel skills for hospitality jobs are practical ones: total sales by outlet, work out occupancy and food cost percentages, compare this week with last week, and count nights between dates. You don't need macros or advanced modelling. This guide is for anyone applying to a hotel, restaurant or events role, and it shows each skill on small tables you can type in yourself.

What hospitality teams use Excel for#

Hotels and restaurants use Excel to track money, guests and staff, usually in simple tables that someone updates every day. Typical files include:

• Daily sales reports by outlet, shift or day: restaurant, bar, room service, events.
• Room reports with rooms sold, occupancy and average rate.
• Cost sheets for food, drinks and labour as a percentage of sales.
• Bookings and guest lists with check-in and check-out dates.
• Staff rotas and hours worked.

Front desk and floor roles mostly read and update these files. Supervisors, assistant managers and revenue or finance roles build the formulas. The skills overlap a lot with Excel skills for retail jobs and Excel skills for customer service roles.

All the sales examples below use this weekly table in A1:D9:

A cover is one guest served, so 64 covers means 64 meals.

Revenue by outlet with SUMIF and SUMIFS#

To total sales for one outlet, use SUMIF: it checks one column and adds the matching numbers from another.

=SUMIF(B2:B9,"Restaurant",D2:D9)

The result is 9,900 (2,560 + 2,080 + 2,940 + 2,320). Change "Restaurant" to "Bar" and you get 3,000.

When you need two conditions, such as one outlet on one day, use SUMIFS. Its range to add comes first:

=SUMIFS(D2:D9,B2:B9,"Restaurant",A2:A9,"Wed")

This returns 2,940. You can also use a number condition. Restaurant revenue on days with 60 or more covers is =SUMIFS(D2:D9,B2:B9,"Restaurant",C2:C9,">=60"), which gives 5,500 (Monday and Wednesday). The SUMIFS function guide lists every argument.

Occupancy, ADR and RevPAR#

Hotel room reports rest on three ratios, and each one is a single division. Say a hotel has 120 rooms available tonight, sold 96 of them, and earned 13,440 in room revenue:

In a real sheet you point at cells instead of typing numbers, for example =B2/B1. Format occupancy as a percentage (Windows: Ctrl+Shift+%; Mac: Control+Shift+%), and the 0.8 shows as 80%.

Notice that RevPAR equals occupancy times ADR: 0.8 × 140 = 112. That is a handy check that your formulas are right.

Food cost and week-over-week change#

Food cost percentage is the cost of the food you used divided by food sales. With 3,150 of food cost and 10,500 of food sales:

=3150/10500

Formatted as a percentage, this shows 30%. Kitchens watch this number closely, because a rise means waste, price increases or portions that are too big.

Managers also compare each week with the last. The percent change formula is new minus old, divided by old:

=(B2-A2)/A2

If last week's revenue in A2 was 11,200 and this week's in B2 is 12,040, the result is 0.075, or 7.5% as a percentage. A negative result means sales fell. The brackets matter: without them, Excel divides first and the answer is wrong. The percent change lesson has you build this formula and format it.

Averages: spend per cover and typical covers#

Averages show what a normal day or a normal guest looks like. AVERAGE adds the numbers and divides by how many there are:

=AVERAGE(C2:C9)

On the sales table, this returns 48.125 covers per outlet per day. To find the average spend per restaurant guest, divide restaurant revenue by restaurant covers:

=SUMIF(B2:B9,"Restaurant",D2:D9)/SUMIF(B2:B9,"Restaurant",C2:C9)

That is 9,900 ÷ 244, or about 40.57 per cover. Wrap it in ROUND(...,2) if you want exactly two decimals. The AVERAGE function guide explains how it treats blanks and text, which matters when some days have no data yet.

Dates: nights stayed and bookings by month#

Excel stores every date as a number, so you can subtract one date from another. If check-in is in B2 and check-out in C2:

=C2-B2

A stay from 12 March 2026 to 15 March 2026 gives 3 nights. If the result looks like a date, change the cell format to General or Number.

Two more date skills come up often:

• =MONTH(B2) returns the month number of a booking (3 for March), so you can count or total bookings by month.
• =DATE(2026,3,12) builds a date from a year, month and day. This avoids mix-ups between day-first and month-first date settings.

The lesson on how Excel stores dates covers DATE, YEAR, MONTH and DAY step by step.

How to show these skills in an application#

Employers want proof that you can use Excel on their kind of data, not a list of function names. On your CV, describe a task and its result, such as "kept a weekly sales report by outlet using SUMIF" or "tracked food cost percentage each week". The guide to listing Excel skills on your resume has more wording ideas.

Some hotel groups and restaurant chains give a short Excel test as part of hiring, especially for supervisor, admin and finance roles. Expect tasks like the ones above: a SUMIF, a percentage, a date difference and some sorting. If you are moving towards a back-office role, also read Excel skills for admin jobs and the Excel skills operations managers use. To see where you stand, take the Excel level test or try the basic Excel test under time pressure.

Practise it#

Try the exercise on this page first: it is the Bar revenue total from the weekly table. Then practise SUMIF in a live spreadsheet, where you type each formula and it is checked instantly. Move on to the percent change lesson for food cost and weekly change, and the date basics lesson for nights and booking months.