How many staff does your hotel need, hour by hour?
A hotel staffing calculator is a free tool that applies a labour standard (minutes per departure room, minutes per check-in, covers per server) to a day's workload and returns the staff required per hour, per department. Enter rooms and occupancy, adjust the standard your department head would sign, and read the result as a table you can roster from. The defaults are the indicative figures from the HotelCadence department rostering guides. Your property replaces them with its own.
HotelCadence is workforce software for hotels. It reads the bookings already in your property system, forecasts how busy each department will be hour by hour, builds the roster to match, records worked hours and prepares payroll. Department heads approve every roster. From US$6 per scheduled employee per month.
Your hotel tonight
107 departure rooms and 88 stayovers make 83.1 attendant-hours, or 11 attendants on 8-hour shifts.
If every departure room waited for the 12:00 check-out, finishing by 15:00 would take 20 attendants in that window.
Cleaning departures as they empty from 10:00 spreads the same work over 5 hours and needs 12 attendants working departures during that wave.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Occupied rooms | 195 |
| Departure rooms | 107 |
| Stayover rooms | 88 |
| Cleaning minutes incl. allowance | 4,983 |
| Attendant-hours | 83.1 |
| Attendants on shift | 11 |
| Attendants if departures wait for check-out | 20 |
| Attendants on a wave from two hours before check-out | 12 |
Worked example, figures indicative. Default standards are the indicative figures from the HotelCadence department rostering guides; replace them with the standard your department head signs.
What a labour standard is, and why the calculator needs one
A labour standard states how many staff a department needs for a given workload: minutes per check-in and a queue target at the desk, minutes per departure room and a ready-by time in housekeeping, covers per server and a floor minimum in F&B. It is step 3 of the five-step method, agreed in writing with the department head, and it carries the service promise. Without a standard, a staffing number is a headcount somebody remembered.
The calculator makes the arithmetic visible. Housekeeping: departure rooms times minutes per departure, plus stayovers times minutes per stayover, plus an allowance for travel, carts and linen, divided by sixty and by the shift length. Front desk: arrivals and departures per two-hour slot times minutes per transaction, plus enquiries, divided by the minutes an agent can spend on transactions while the queue target holds. Breakfast: covers per half hour divided by covers per server-hour, with a floor minimum while the outlet is open. Change any input and the table changes with it.
Where the default standards come from
| Default standard | Source |
|---|---|
| 30 min per departure room, 15 per stayover, +10% travel | HotelCadence housekeeping rostering guide, indicative |
| 5 min per check-in, 3 per check-out, 2 per enquiry, 4-minute queue target | HotelCadence front desk rostering guide, indicative |
| 20 covers per server-hour, 50 per cook-hour, 2 servers and 1 cook floor minimum | HotelCadence F&B rostering guide, indicative |
All three are indicative starting points published in the HotelCadence rostering guides. A 300-room resort with suites and a 120-room select-service hotel will sign different numbers. The demand curves (arrivals peak 14:00 to 20:00, departures peak 08:00 to 12:00, breakfast peak 08:00 to 09:00) are a city-hotel shape; your property system supplies the real one.
Three numbers to take from each table
- 1
The total hours
Attendant-hours, agent-hours or server-hours for the day. This is the paid time the workload needs at your standard. Compare it with what the current roster pays for; the difference is the first estimate of the hours a demand-matched roster recovers.
- 2
The peak
Staff required in the busiest slot. A flat roster staffs every hour at the peak. The calculator shows what that costs against the curve: the "flat roster" line is the gap between the two.
- 3
The shape
Where the hours fall. Housekeeping shows the difference between waiting for check-out and cleaning departures as they empty. The front desk shows the evening wave. Breakfast shows the 08:00 crunch. The shape is what shift design (step 4) has to follow.
The calculator stops at step 3. Steps 4 and 5, shift design inside labour law and filling the shifts with real employees, are what AI staff scheduling does from a live forecast every day, two weeks ahead. The labour savings calculator turns the recovered hours into money for your market.
Questions people bring to a hotel staffing calculator
How does a hotel staffing calculator work out housekeepers per room?
There is no fixed ratio. The number comes from tomorrow's departures and stayovers times the minutes per room your executive housekeeper sets. At the indicative standard of 30 minutes per departure, 15 per stayover and a 10% allowance, a 250-room hotel at 78% occupancy with 55% of occupied rooms departing needs about 83 attendant-hours, or eleven attendants on eight-hour shifts. The same hotel on a day when 20% of rooms depart needs nine, because stayovers still have to be serviced.
How many front desk agents does a hotel need per 100 rooms?
It depends on the hour. A 250-room hotel with 107 arrivals and 107 departures at five minutes per check-in and three per check-out needs one agent at 06:00 and after 22:00, two for most of the day and three in the 10:00 check-out wave and the 16:00 arrival wave: 36 agent-hours, against 54 for a flat three-agent desk. A ratio per 100 rooms hides those two waves, which is where the queue forms and the review score is lost.
Why is occupancy alone not enough to size the staff?
Because two nights at the same occupancy carry different work. A night with 180 departures and a night with 60 departures both show 78% occupancy; the first needs about half again as many housekeeping hours. The same holds for arrivals at the desk and group breakfasts in the restaurant. The drivers are departures, arrivals, room type and covers, per hour. Occupancy is their by-product.
How do I turn the calculator result into a roster?
Take the per-hour table as the demand line, then design shifts that follow it: staggered starts, a swing shift over the afternoon, housekeeping waves from two hours before check-out, a cut order as breakfast slows. Keep every shift inside your market's working-hour limits, rest rules and overtime caps. Then fill shifts by skill, contract hours and preference. That is steps 4 and 5 of the method.
How is this different from the labour savings calculator?
This tool answers "how many people, when" for one day at your standard. The savings calculator answers "what does gut-feel rostering cost over three years" for your property and market, in money. Use this one with a department head; use the other with a finance director.
Can I save or share the result?
Yes. The link under the table carries every input, so a department head can open the same result on their own screen. No email is needed and nothing is stored on our side.
30 minutes · your own property-system data if you share access · no obligation.