Anyone who says that running a hotel (or being a property manager) is “easy” has clearly never experienced the months leading up to peak season.
NB: This is an article from Smartness, one of our Expert Partners
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Those days when you’re checking the booking calendar obsessively, wondering if everything’s on track or if August will end up empty, losing the most important revenue of the year.
Those days when your anxiety grows and it’s hard to resist the temptation to drop prices – just enough to get some quick bookings, fill the rooms, and finally sleep at night.
But before you get caught in that cycle again this year, stop. Maybe the problem isn’t even you. Have you thought about that?
In this article, I’ll walk you through the 4 key steps to analyze your occupancy – without false alarms – and show you how to act accordingly.
Step 1: Are you looking at the right data?
Here’s a real-world example:
It’s mid-June, and you’re (rightly) keeping a close eye on your high-season sales. You open your booking calendar and see that August is full of gaps: a quick calculation shows you’re only at 27% occupancy.
Seriously? In your most important month of the year? No way – August has always been your strongest month, with near-full occupancy every year.
So you double-check: you pull up last year’s booking calendar, and just as you remembered, it was practically sold out.
You decide to put it in black and white: August 2024 vs. August 2025. But the numbers confirm your worst fears:
- Revenue 2024: €66,975
- Estimated revenue 2025: €22,790
- Occupancy 2024: 90%
- Estimated occupancy 2025: 27%
- Average price 2024: €104
- Average price 2025: €120
A disaster, or so it seems. And at this point, the temptation is strong: drop prices immediately to get more bookings and avoid empty rooms.
But before making any decisions, hold on!
What you’ve just done is compare your final numbers from 2024 (i.e., bookings that already happened) with the current bookings for 2025 – and that’s a mistake many people make.
It’s like comparing a marathon you’ve already finished to one you’ve only halfway completed: it doesn’t make sense. Instead, you need to analyze your on-the-books data.
Step 2: How to compare on-the-books occupancy
The right way to assess booking performance (without panicking) is to compare your on-the-books data – meaning, the occupancy you had on the same date last year.
In our example: If today is June 10, 2025, ask yourself: What was my occupancy on June 10, 2024, for August?
Many hoteliers skip this step because comparing final numbers is easier, while comparing on-the-books data requires downloading reservations and having decent Excel skills.
