Hotels grew from 60 to 90 rooms. Empty beds in September eat the margin
On 27 August 2026 PKO Bank Polski’s analysis centre wrote that the average mountain hotel now has nearly 90 rooms, and about 100 on the coast. In 2025 more than 28.2 million people stayed in Polish hotels. A larger property spreads fixed costs, but it has to fill more beds every day.
On 27 August 2026 PKO Bank Polski’s analysis centre published a sector note, “The hotel market is growing at the expense of margins”. The average hotel in the mountain regions has grown from about 60 rooms in 2016 to nearly 90 rooms in the first half of 2026. On the coast the average has gone from about 70 to 100.
In 2025 more than 28.2 million people stayed in Polish hotels — 7.2 per cent more than a year earlier and about 10.7 million more than in 2015. The analysts counted a rise of more than 61 per cent in a decade, despite the pandemic collapse.
For the owner, the guest record matters less than a sentence in the same report: a larger hotel spreads some of its fixed costs over more rooms, but it has to fill far more beds every day. Hotel occupancy stops being a bank chart. It becomes a list of rooms that must be cleaned in the morning, sold in the evening, and not sold twice.
On 30 August Bankier.pl repeated the figures via PAP. In September, when the summer season fades, reception sees the effect sooner than the analyst: the same staff, the same heating of common parts, and more closed doors on the corridor.
Guests, rooms and uneven demand
Since 2016 the number of hotels in the mountain belt has risen by 20 per cent, and on the coast by nearly 8 per cent. The number of rooms jumped more: 80.5 per cent in the mountains and 54.7 per cent by the sea. It is not only properties that are being added. Larger hotels are being added above all.
The stock is shifting towards four and five stars. One- and two-star hotels are declining; three-star supply is broadly stable. Among new projects, PKO writes, four-star hotels clearly dominate. The guest is expected to pay more for a view, a wellness area and a wider range of services. Reception has to hold occupancy, or the higher standard is a cost without revenue.
Three-quarters of demand is domestic. Foreign overnights only passed the 2019 level in 2025, and the average annual growth in foreign tourist numbers in 2019–2025 was about 3 per cent — below the pre-pandemic trend. The effect of the foreign guest is real, but it is concentrated in hotels in the largest cities.
On 1 September 2026 Eurostat released EU overnights for the first half of the year: 1,321 million, 1.7 per cent more than a year earlier. In Poland foreign guests accounted for 19.8 per cent of nights. In Germany the share was 18.5 per cent, in Romania 23, in Malta 95.2. A Polish hotel that plans its season around a guest from Berlin or London is counting on a smaller slice of the market than a property on the Mediterranean.
RevPAR, revenue per available room, was highest in 2025 in Warsaw (PLN 332) and in Kraków and the Tri-City (PLN 329 each). The Tri-City also had the highest ADR, the average daily rate: PLN 449. Wrocław had the lowest RevPAR of the five large markets — PLN 213 — and was the only one to lose occupancy since 2019, from 72.5 per cent to 62.1 per cent. PKO ties that to a strong rise in supply. More rooms in a city does not mean each of them finds a guest.
July was full. September comes off the rate
The Polish Hotel Industry Chamber surveyed July on a sample of 143 hotels, between 3 and 13 August 2026. Bankier.pl reported the results via PAP Biznes.
Eighty-five per cent of properties had occupancy above 50 per cent. More than half, 51 per cent, passed 70 per cent. Four per cent of hotels finished the month below 30 per cent. Among leisure hotels, 92 per cent were at least half full and 69 per cent above 70 per cent. In the business segment, 82 per cent of those surveyed passed the 50 per cent mark.
Fifty-eight per cent of hotels improved occupancy against July 2025; 32 per cent worsened. Sixty-two per cent raised rates, most often by less than 10 per cent. Twenty-three per cent left prices unchanged. Eighty-two per cent called the midpoint of the holidays a success, some with the caveat that the result was below earlier expectations.
That is a picture of the peak. On 29 August the same site described autumn from the guest’s side: in selected popular hotels the gap between August and September reaches 30–36 per cent. For two adults, at the widest gaps, that is up to PLN 3–4.5 thousand less for the stay. The Baltic accounts for 45 per cent of autumn trips, the mountains for 39. In September the sea is chosen more often; in October the proportions reverse.
For the hotel a cheaper September is not a poster promotion. It is the same reception, the same boiler house and a smaller amount hitting the account. PKO writes plainly that a hotel is a business with high exposure to fixed costs. Reception has to run around the clock, rooms have to be cleaned, the restaurant served, and a large building heated, cooled and lit whether or not the last few rooms were sold.
Example: a property after extension, two seasons in one diary
Imagine a hotel in a mountain resort. A dozen or so years ago it had a few dozen rooms. After a new wing it is approaching the scale PKO now quotes as the average: nearly ninety. In August the corridor is full. In September some of the doors stay closed two or three days a week.
Reception works from three lists. Booking.com has its own reservations. Phone and e-mail land in a notebook or a spreadsheet. The property website has a form that someone retypes by hand. On Friday afternoon the same room can be “free” in Excel and taken on the platform. Or the other way round: a guest on the phone gets a confirmation, and the internet channel sells the same number to someone else.
In the morning the housekeeping supervisor gets a slip or a message. She cannot see which departures are certain, which are no-shows, and which rooms have been held for another week. The team cleans “as in high season”, even though September occupancy is not August. Hours go into cost, and some of the rooms stand empty anyway.
This story does not need a large hotel system at once. It needs one list of rooms with a date, a status and a channel, used by reception and housekeeping. When a free room returns to the pool at the moment of cancellation, not after a manual phone call, reception stops promising a number it does not have and stops holding a room “just in case”.
A room diary instead of three lists
In a small guesthouse with a dozen or so rooms, Excel still works if one person holds the sheet and does not leave reception. At several dozen rooms and two or three sales channels the same spreadsheet starts to lie. The platform does not know about the phone. The phone does not know about the website. The website does not know the room is under repair.
A double booking costs more than a September discount. One guest gets a better room, the other compensation or a night next door, and the review stays on the portal that already sends most of the enquiries. In a larger hotel, which PKO describes as the new normal, the mistake follows from availability living in several places.
A shared room diary shows the number, the dates, the channel and the deposit. Reception does not retype. The platform, the form on the site and the phone all hit the same availability. A room in works, a staff room and a room “held for a group” leave the pool before anyone can sell them.
A ready-made hotel programme or an online booking system already joins this in many properties. The problem starts when the hotel has two buildings, apartments with a kitchenette beside hotel rooms, or its own rate for school groups that the subscription does not cover. At ninety doors Excel will not hold a single room list.
Housekeeping and hours when the corridor is not full
PKO flags employment costs as a barrier to activity and notes that wages and energy take a large share of costs. The GUS chart in the report shows cost pressure higher than the “too much competition” pressure. For the shift supervisor the bar on the chart becomes the question of how many people to call in for the morning when there are twenty departures, not sixty.
At the peak the team barely keeps up with morning departures. After the season the same “full house” roster eats the margin the bank’s analysts do not break down per room. A room that nobody took still has to be heated from the corridor. It does not have to be refreshed like a room after a two-day stay with children.
A cleaning list from the diary says which numbers are departures, which stay another night, which are vacant. Room status — dirty, in progress, ready, blocked — is visible at reception before the guest reaches the desk. Reception does not ring upstairs to ask whether a given number has been made up. The floor does not guess whether the guest left at all.
Hours can then be set against that day’s occupancy, not against a feeling that “September is weaker”. Payroll stays with HR. The list from the diary shows what the hotel pays for in the morning when part of the wing is empty anyway. In a property with a dozen rooms a sheet on the back-office door is enough. At the scale in the PKO report the sheet gets lost between shifts.
Platform commission and booking from the website
The bank’s report counts ADR and RevPAR, not channel commission. Reception sees the commission on the statement. The larger the property, the more bookings come from the platform, because the guest searches by filter, not by the name of a guesthouse on a roadside board.
A booking from the hotel’s own site leaves Booking.com in the diary. It takes some of the stays where the property already has a free room and the guest already knows the place from last year. A form with real availability, a deposit and an e-mail confirmation is cheaper than another round of manual correspondence. There is one condition: the site must not promise a room that is not in reception’s diary.
In September and October the diary also takes the Tourist Voucher — a scheme in which the guest books direct with the property and the benefit is a top-up, not full cover. For the hotel that is another channel with its own deadline and its own confirmation. If it lives beside Excel rather than in the same room list, September gets denser on paper, not in occupancy.
Competition from short-term lets, which PKO mentions, works in a similar way. An apartment on a platform has a lower fixed-cost floor and different price flexibility. The hotel answers with standard, breakfast and a booking that does not vanish in a private message. It will not answer if the only route to a free room is a portal that already takes its cut.
The guest who did not arrive
In July, when 51 per cent of IGHP hotels surveyed had occupancy above 70 per cent, a no-show hurts differently than in September. At the peak a no-show leaves a hole that a guest without a reservation sometimes cannot fill. After the season it leaves a room that might not have found a taker anyway — but it also leaves breakfast ordered in the kitchen and a cleaning hour planned “for departure”.
A reminder the day before arrival, with a cancellation link, is not a gadget. A guest who cannot come will often cancel if someone asks. Without the question they vanish. The room returns to the pool in the morning, when it is already too late to sell it for the same night at a sensible rate.
A deposit or prepayment for the weekend and a long weekend works where the restaurant table would want one too — at the peak and for larger groups. On a Tuesday in September in a mountain property it is often unnecessary and puts people off. A booking programme that can switch the deposit on for selected dates, and leave a plain confirmation on the others, is closer to reception’s work than a policy copied from the web.
Breakfast and a table in the hotel restaurant come from the same night. If the kitchen gets the headcount from the diary, not from a slip at the till, there is less surplus and fewer calls at 9 p.m. Where the property also runs an open restaurant, the cousin is table booking — a different resource, the same problem: do not sell twice, and do not prepare a meal for someone who will not be there.
Excel, a ready-made programme, your own panel
Not every property needs software written to order. A guesthouse with a dozen rooms, one person on reception and a weekend season can often manage with a calendar, a deposit and manual discipline. Excel stops being enough when there are several dozen rooms, several channels, and the next reception shift cannot see what the previous one wrote down.
A ready-made hotel programme — a Polish subscription, a link to the platforms, booking on the site — is sensible when the process is standard: room, night, breakfast, invoice. Such a programme joins the diary to the portals and gives an occupancy report. A working subscription is left alone if it already handles that flow.
Your own panel makes sense when the off-the-shelf tool does not handle how the property actually works. Two buildings with a different rate. Rooms plus apartments by the night and by the week. School groups with a deposit unlike the individual guest. A spa or a restaurant that has to eat the same slot as the stay. An accounting link the subscription will not touch. Or several properties in one family that today live in three logins.
Sometimes an integration is enough: a link to the platform, a form on the site, an export to the bookkeeper. Sometimes the diary, the cleaning list and the guest portal have to sit in one place, because the data already travels by e-mail. The difference shows up after writing down how reception knows the room is free — not from a feature catalogue. A broader comparison of subscription and a commissioned build is in the piece on when SaaS stops adding up.
What to join before buying another subscription
The PKO report ends with the thesis that the next stage of Polish hospitality is a shift from simultaneous growth in scale and profitability to a model in which revenues still rise, but holding on to existing margins becomes a larger challenge. The analysts are not designing software. They are describing pressure: larger properties, a higher standard, labour and energy costs, less room to raise the rate.
In the property that pressure lands in four places. A diary that does not sell twice. A cleaning list that does not call a full shift onto a half-empty corridor. An own channel beside the platform, so commission does not eat the September rate. A deposit and a reminder, so a no-show does not leave breakfast in the kitchen.
GESOFT builds booking panels and hotel systems around that flow, not around a universal catalogue. Where a ready-made programme works, it stays. Where there are two rates, two buildings or housekeeping outside the subscription, a room diary, a room status and a form on the site can be joined so that reception and the floor look at the same thing.
September 2026 is a good moment for that conversation not because the season is over. Because it is already clear how many empty rooms remain after August, and how many hours go into cost when the roster is still “summer”.
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