USALI 12 vs USALI 11: what changed and what it means

The 12th edition took effect on 1 January 2026. It is not a rewrite, but several changes move cost from one reporting line to another, which is enough to make this year's statement stop comparing to last year's unless you adjust for it.

Most write-ups of the 12th edition list the changes. This one sorts them by where each change lands in the statement, because that is what determines whether it affects a number anyone is paid on. It also sets out how to restate a prior year, and corrects two things that are widely reported as changes and are not.

The standard says the quiet part itself, immediately before its own list of changes:

It names the problem and stops there. The rest of this page is the part that follows.

Changes that move cost between a department and an undistributed line

These are the ones that change departmental profit. Both sides of the move sit above gross operating profit, so GOP itself is unaffected, but the departmental line rises, the undistributed total rises with it, and departmental flow-through against prior year stops being a like-for-like number.

In-room entertainment systems left the rooms department

In-room entertainment systems expense moved out of rooms and into information and telecommunications systems. The change list records it twice, once under rooms and once under the receiving schedule, where it notes the expense was previously in rooms. Rooms departmental expense falls, undistributed expense rises by the same amount, and rooms departmental profit rises. For a resort with meaningful in-room technology this is not a rounding difference.

Loyalty programme costs were split in two

The rooms department gained a loyalty programme member benefits line, capturing the mandated amenities and services given to loyalty members, and complimentary food, beverage and gifts provided to members under a brand mandate are now recorded there. Separately, sales and marketing gained a promotion account so that points issued as part of a marketing promotion are recorded apart from the existing loyalty programme charge. The effect is that a cost previously blurred across the top line and a single marketing account now sits in two named places, one departmental and one undistributed.

Changes that move revenue and cost between two operated departments

Minibar moved out of food and beverage

Minibar food and beverage line items moved to the other operated department. This is the one reclassification that moves revenue as well as cost, so food and beverage revenue falls, other operated revenue rises, and two departmental profit lines change. Anywhere a fee, a covenant or a food cost percentage is struck on food and beverage revenue, that base is now smaller than it was on the same trading.

Changes inside the undistributed block

Utilities became Energy, Water, and Waste

The former utilities schedule was renamed Energy, Water, and Waste, with four subcategories: energy, water, waste and contract services. The rename reflects reporting expectations on resource use, and it is the single change the standard identifies as material to the summary operating statement itself.

Waste removal moved into it from property operation and maintenance

Less widely reported, and it matters more than the rename. Waste removal was previously in property operation and maintenance and now sits in the new schedule. Gross operating profit is untouched, but any per-available-room maintenance benchmark compared across the change is comparing two different things.

Changes below gross operating profit

Preopening became an expense line in nonoperating income and expenses

Preopening was added as an other expense within nonoperating income and expenses. The standard describes these as start-up costs for the hotel or an outlet within it, office rental, legal fees and licences, recruitment, relocation, training, marketing and website production, expensed as incurred. It notes they are typically presented on the owner's books, and where they sit on the hotel's books they are recorded here. Operating equipment and unconsumed inventories bought for an opening are explicitly not preopening expenses; they remain balance sheet assets.

This is the change most likely to move EBITDA rather than shuffle figures above it.

Lease income was added and cost recovery was clarified

A lease income line was added for leasing activity managed by the owner, including common area maintenance recoveries, and cost recovery income was clarified as third-party recoveries under leases managed by the operator. Rent was updated for the current lease accounting model, and right-of-use asset and lease liability lines were added to the balance sheet.

One point worth stating plainly, because it is often described the other way round. For an operating lease the standard directs a single straight-line lease cost, made up of the right-of-use asset amortisation and the adjustment to the lease liability, presented as rent expense throughout the USALI. It is not split into interest and amortisation. Rent sits above EBITDA, so an operating lease still reduces EBITDA in full and the right-of-use model produces no EBITDA uplift. A finance lease is different: its amortisation and interest are owner-level items below EBITDA, so classification, not the right-of-use asset, is what moves the line.

New detail that does not move anything

These add visibility without relocating cost, so they do not disturb a prior-year comparison. They are still the changes an owner is most likely to find useful.

Annual mandatory brand and operator costs, Schedule 16

A new schedule gathering the costs a brand or operator makes mandatory into one place. Three things about it are routinely got wrong. It does not create a cost line: the costs stay recorded in their own operating department schedules and balance sheet accounts and are not deducted again here. It is prepared once a year, for information. And the standard states directly that it should not be relied upon for benchmarking, because bundled charges are not comparable between brands.

There is a practical rule inside it worth knowing. Where a brand bundles reservation, marketing, central systems and administrative assessments into a single charge, the preparer is told to ask the brand for the allocation, and if the brand will not supply one, the whole bundled charge is reported as franchise and affiliation marketing under sales and marketing. If you have ever tried to unpick a bundled programme fee, that is now a question you are entitled to ask in writing. See the HMA fees guide and the franchise fee stack.

Payroll full-time equivalent, Schedule 15

A new schedule reporting full-time-equivalent employees by department. It counts people, not cost. Total for the hotel is reported first, then rooms, food and beverage, administrative and general, information and telecommunications systems, sales and marketing, property operation and maintenance, executive lounge, staff dining and house laundry, with other operated departments added as they apply. The full-time equivalent is calculated from hours worked over the hours in a standard working week for the period, and the report should disclose the standard working week used. Labour cost metrics were updated to be consistent with it.

Service recovery, and a human resources split

Administrative and general gained a service recovery account, for costs incurred to remediate service issues experienced by guests, and the human resources account was divided into recruitment and relocation, and employee relations.

Executive lounge, digital marketing, and all-inclusive

An executive lounge subschedule was added, with an expense line in rooms and lounge access revenue coded to other rooms revenue where material. Sales and marketing gained paid search, display and social accounts, and the former media line was renamed advertising, covering print, radio and television. And all-inclusive properties gained an entire new part of the standard, with their own summary operating statements, department schedules, income statement format and metrics, which the previous edition never provided.

Two things reported as changes that are not

Resort fees did not move out of rooms revenue

This is the most common error in write-ups of the 12th edition, and it is worth being exact about. The 12th edition renamed the account from resort fees to destination, resort, and urban fees. That is a rename. The move out of the rooms department into miscellaneous income was made in the 11th edition, published in 2014 and effective from 2015, and is documented in the contemporary literature on that edition. The 12th edition restates the classification rule, and the restatement is what gets mistaken for a change.

If a benchmark provider or an adviser tells you resort fee treatment changed in 2026, they are eleven years late.

There is no new mandatory labour cost schedule

The new schedule is the full-time equivalent headcount schedule described above. A headcount schedule is not a labour cost schedule, and the 11th edition already recommended a labour cost schedule for each department. The two are frequently conflated.

How to restate a prior year

Sorting the changes by where they land gives the adjustment directly. Work through them in this order.

Gross operating profit is usually the number that survives. Most of the reclassifications move cost within the block above GOP, so the GOP line itself is unaffected. That is genuinely useful, because it means an incentive fee struck on GOP, and most GOP-based covenants, are not disturbed by the transition.

What does move is everything more granular than GOP. Departmental profit, total undistributed expense, departmental flow-through, cost per available room by department and labour metrics all shift. Management agreements and loan covenants are frequently written against those rather than against GOP alone, so read your own documents before assuming the transition is neutral to you.

The one below-GOP item is preopening. If a property carried preopening costs anywhere other than nonoperating income and expenses, moving them changes EBITDA rather than reshuffling above it.

A practical restatement, in three steps. First, take the prior year and move the six items in the table above to their new homes. Second, recompute departmental profit, total undistributed expense and any ratio struck on a departmental base. Third, leave GOP alone unless preopening moved, and check EBITDA if it did. Anything else in the 12th edition adds visibility rather than relocating cost, so it does not need a restatement entry.

Method, and what this page is

This page is commentary and mapping. It is not a reproduction of the standard, and it is not a substitute for owning it. Anyone applying USALI in practice needs the book.

Every change described here is taken from the section the 12th edition carries under the heading Selected Changes from the 11th Revised Edition, running from page 15 to page 19, which is the publisher's own statement of what changed. Where this page describes what an account or a schedule is for, that comes from the body of the same edition. Nothing here is drawn from a secondary summary of the standard.

The 11th-edition position, which the standard's change list does not describe, is taken from the peer-reviewed account by Schmidgall and DeFranco published in 2015, cited below.

Scope, and what this deliberately does not do

• It covers the material changes the publisher lists. The change section states that additional changes appear throughout the book, so this is not exhaustive and does not claim to be.
• It does not reproduce the schedule of accounts, any line-item list, or the structure of either edition.
• It states what moved and what that does to a comparison. It does not tell you how to account for your own property, which depends on your agreements and your auditor.
• Where a claim about the 11th edition could not be confirmed from a primary source it has been left out rather than inferred.
• Stax IQ is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or licensed by the publishers of USALI.

Sources

• Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry, 12th Revised Edition. Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals, 2024. ISBN 979-8-218-33536-6. Principally the section Selected Changes from the 11th Revised Edition, pages 15 to 19, and the effective-date and comparability note on page 14.
• Schmidgall, R. S. and DeFranco, A. (2015). Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry, 11th Revised Edition: The New Guidelines for the Lodging Industry. The Journal of Hospitality Financial Management, 23(1), pages 79 to 89. DOI 10.1080/10913211.2015.1038196. Used for the 11th-edition position, including the treatment of resort fees.

How to cite this

The version number changes whenever a mapping, a classification or a source changes, so a statement quoted against version 1.0 stays checkable after this page has moved on. This page is published under a Creative Commons Attribution licence, so it may be quoted, adapted or republished, including commercially, with attribution.