Believe it or not, peak season is just around the corner. With so much uncertainty around geopolitics and travel demand this year, smart planning is more important than ever. Now is the time to review your summer pricing, promotions, and availability controls to ensure you’re positioned to maximize revenue.
NB: This is an article form RoomPriceGenie, one of our Expert Partners
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To help, here are five peak-season revenue strategies to consider, along with practical tips and tools to take your hotel’s performance to the next level.
1. Start with a Demand Forecast
A demand forecast helps you estimate how much room demand to expect on each day throughout the summer months.
It can help guide your pricing, distribution, and revenue strategies, while also assisting with operational planning such as staffing levels and supply needs.
To project demand, analyze key drivers such as:
- Day-of-week patterns
- Local holidays and events
- Market trends
- Market segments
- Competitor rates and positioning
Tip: Don’t forget holidays and events in key feeder markets, which can increase (or decrease) demand even when it’s a regular day of the week in your area.
Product feature: RoomPriceGenie’s Events Calendar shows upcoming public holidays and events that may impact demand, including those in neighboring countries.
2. Look to the Past to Plan for the Future
For most hotels, demand patterns are relatively predictable year over year.
To anticipate day-by-day performance, look at “same time last year” data. You’ll often see similar patterns in booking windows, average length of stay, holiday demand, and weekend vs. weekday performance.
But there are always exceptions. Successful revenue strategies account for both consistencies and outliers.
Examples of year-over-year changes include:
- Major disruptions that affect travel demand
- Holidays that fall on a different day of the week
- Events that don’t return (concerts, sporting matches, conferences, etc.)
- Unusual weather patterns
- Changes in school calendars
Be sure to account for these factors and keep a close eye on your booking pace to know early if demand patterns stray from expectations.
Tip: “Day match” dates year over year (compare days of the week instead of calendar dates) to account for demand patterns and holidays or events falling on different days.
Product feature: RoomPriceGenie’s Revenue Analytics and Reporting Dashboard allows you to track performance against the same time last year, breaking down performance by room type, channel, property, and more.
3. Find the Sweet Spot in Hotel Pricing
While travelers are generally willing to pay higher rates during peak season, after several years of inflation some guests may be more price sensitive.
If you’re too aggressive with pricing, pickup might be weaker than expected. But if you price too low, you risk selling out too quickly and missing out on revenue.
