Too many hotel teams treat the forecast as a report card for the GM or owners. But the best commercial teams know the truth: a forecast is a roadmap. It shouldn’t just predict the future; it should help you change it.
NB: This is an article from Demand Calendar
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To move from passive reporting to an active strategy, you need to build your logic around pickup and pace, not historical averages and hope. Here is how to turn your hotel forecasting into a reliable growth engine.
Build a Pickup-Driven Forecast Your Team Can Trust
A forecast is only as good as its inputs. If Sales, Revenue, and Marketing are looking at different numbers, you aren’t forecasting – you’re guessing.
Start by defining clear roles to eliminate silos:
- Revenue Management: Owns demand modeling, pricing, and the pickup report.
- Marketing: Owns the campaign calendar and projected traffic/conversion impact.
- Sales: Owns the B2B pipeline, including conversion probabilities for tentative groups.
- Operations: Owns capacity constraints (labor) and cost implications.
Center the Process on Pickup
The heartbeat of your strategy should be the pickup report. This reveals how many new bookings were added over a specific period for future arrival dates, highlighting booking velocity.
If your team relies solely on “On The Books” (OTB) totals, you miss the trend. You’ll need to include a pace report to make the speed easier to understand. Is your booking velocity for next month faster or slower than the average or your expectations?
Pro Tip: Choose methods that match the horizon.
- Short-term (0–14 days): Use exponential smoothing for pickup by day of arrival.
- Mid-term (1–3 months): Combine pickup curves with event calendars and group pipeline overlays.
- Long-term (Budgeting): Use scenario planning (optimistic/pessimistic) based on macro demand.
Connect the Forecast to Commercial Levers
A forecast creates value only when it triggers action. You must translate pickup signals into coordinated moves across price, promotion, and product. Create an “If This, Then That” playbook for your team so they know precisely how to react to the data.
