You can’t build a future-proof hotel strategy on last month’s data. You can’t staff for a surge, build a sales pipeline, or capture new market segments by looking backward. Success in today’s fast-moving market is not about reporting on the past; it’s about predicting and shaping the future.
NB: This is an article from Demand Calendar
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and stay up to date
The most successful hoteliers understand this. They’ve shifted their focus from historical reports to predictive strategy. That’s why the first and most important question you must ask is not about what happened, but what is about to happen outside the walls of your hotel.
What are the future travel reasons to our destination?
Instead of just looking at last year’s demand, you need to be a local expert on next year’s demand. This is about anticipating macro trends.
Your team should be able to answer:
- What new companies are opening offices in our area?
- What major conventions, concerts, or sporting events are confirmed for the next 18 months?
- Are new airlines or routes being added to our local airport?
The Data Problem: Manually finding these answers is a nightmare. It means someone has to spend hours every week scraping websites, reading local business journals, and compiling it all into a spreadsheet that’s outdated the moment it’s finished.
Why this matters: This is proactive demand generation. Knowing these answers lets you target the right audience long before your competition.
What is our on-the-books (OTB) pace really telling us?
Evaluating your current OTB is crucial, but not in isolation. The real insights come from comparison. “Full” is not the same as “profitable.”
You need to analyze your pace against key benchmarks:
- Same Time Last Year (STLY): Are we pacing ahead or behind in specific segments?
- Budget: How are we tracking toward our financial goals?
- The Market (STR data): Are we pacing ahead of last year but behind the market? This is a critical red flag.
The Data Problem: Getting this level of detail is notoriously tricky. Your PMS might show you raw OTB, but can it easily overlay STLY, budget, and market data, all segmented? For most hotels, this means manually pulling multiple reports into a complex Excel file, wasting valuable time you could be using to act on the data.
Why this matters: Pace is your earliest warning system. It tells you how you are filling, not just if you are filling.
