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The purpose of this paper is to show the implementation of customer profitability analysis (CPA) using time‐driven activity‐based costing (TDABC), in a Turkish hotel.

A case study was conducted in a four‐star hotel with 100‐room capacity in the Çukurova region of Turkey. Interviews, direct observations, and documentation collection were used to collect the data.

The results showed that some of the customer segments which were found unprofitable under the conventional ABC method were determined profitable using TDABC. The case study also revealed the cost of idle resources devoted for front office, housekeeping, food preparation, and marketing activities.

Only a single hotel operating in Turkey is examined in this paper. Further research should focus on implementing CPA using TDABC in other hotels in Turkey and abroad.

Based on the results of the study, the hotel management is better able to understand profitability of different customer segments and implement appropriate strategies. Moreover, the time equations of TDABC are considered to provide hotel management with an opportunity to better balance the capacities supplied in departments.

There is limited research relating to profitability analysis in service companies in general and in the hotel industry in particular. Therefore, this paper is unique in the sense that it analyzes the use of TDABC systems for CPA within a real case hotel.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the differences between a traditional costing system (TCS) and resource consumption accounting (RCA) based on a case study carried out in a hospital.

A descriptive case study was first carried out to identify the current costing system of the case hospital. An exploratory case study was then conducted to reveal how implementing RCA within the case hospital assigns costs differently to gallbladder surgeries than the current costing system (i.e. a TCS).

The study showed that, in contrast to a TCS, RCA considers the unused capacity, which is the difference between the work that can be performed based on current resources and the work that is actually being performed. Therefore, it assigns lower total costs to open and laparoscopic gallbladder surgeries. The study also showed that by separating costs into fixed and variable RCA allows managers to benefit from a pricing strategy based on the difference between the service’s selling price and variable costs incurred in providing that service.

The limitation of this study is that, because of time constraints, the implementation was performed in the general surgery department only. However, since RCA is an advanced system that has the same application procedures for any department inside in a hospital, managers need only time gaps to implement this system to all parts of the hospital.

This study concluded that RCA is better than a TCS for use in health care settings that have high overhead costs because it accurately assigns overhead costs to services by considering unused capacities incurred by a hospital. Consequently, this study provides insight into both measuring and managing unused capacities within the health care sector. This study also concluded that RCA helps health care administrators increase their competitive advantage by allowing them to determine the lowest service price.

Since the literature review found no study comparing RCA with TCS in a real-life health care setting, little is known about differences arising from applying these systems in this context. Thus, the current study fills this gap in the literature by comparing RCA with TCS for both open and laparoscopic gallbladder surgeries.