When a traveler searches for a room, that isn’t the start of the journey; it’s the middle. By the time the “intent” shows up on your dashboard, the decision to travel bookings has already been made. If you are only reacting to booking intent, you aren’t forecasting – you’re just responding to an echo.
NB: This is an article from Demand Calendar
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The “Symptom” Trap: Why We Take the Easy Way Out
Why do most hoteliers focus on search volume and competitor rates? Because it’s the path of least resistance.
We are currently drowning in “Symptom Data.” It is easy to access, looks impressive in a slide deck, and provides a false sense of security. This creates two major problems:
- The “Safety in Numbers” Fallacy: It is psychologically safer to be wrong with the crowd than to be right alone. If you follow the comp-set and the whole market crashes, you can blame “the economy.” If you take a creative risk based on a “Cause” signal and it fails, you are the only one to blame.
- The Creativity Crisis: The average hotelier in 2026 is wearing five hats. Analyzing the cause – the “why” behind the travel – requires connecting dots across industries. Looking at a “Red/Green” rate-shopper dashboard takes 30 seconds; creative synthesis takes 3 hours. Most choose the 30-second fix and follow their competitors off the cliff.
Know Your Role: Generic vs. Differentiated
Before you change your strategy, you must be honest about what you are selling. Your ability to act on “Causal Data” depends entirely on your pricing power.
- The Generic Hotel: The Commodity Game
If your property is a “generic” hotel – standard rooms, standard amenities, no unique brand voice – you are a commodity. In this world, you are a “price taker,” not a “price maker.”
- The Strategy: For you, following the symptoms (and the competitors) is actually a valid survival strategy. Since you have no differentiation, you cannot “de-sync” from the market. If the comp set drops prices, you must follow suit, or you will simply vanish from the search results. You are a passenger on the market’s bus.
