Booking Pace

Booking pace, also referred to as reservation velocity, is a key metric to understand as part of your overall hotel revenue management strategy. Understanding how quickly individuals are booking rooms for specific dates can help hoteliers make adjustments to pricing in real-time, ensuring they get the most revenue possible for each reservation.

What is Booking Pace?

By analyzing booking pace, hoteliers can track the rate rooms are being booked for a specific time period. This way, it’s easier to make educated guesses about future demand, pricing strategy, staffing levels and inventory allocation. Booking pace is typically expressed as a percentage of total rooms that are booked before a specific point in time.

Booking Pace Formula

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To apply this formula to a real-world scenario, if a hotel with 200 rooms is looking at bookings 30 days out and they receive 20 rooms booked per day on average, they’re at a 10% booking pace.

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If this hotel then receives 40 bookings for the same time period over four subsequent days, this would double their booking pace to 20% per day.

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This bump in bookings may indicate an uptick in demand, meaning the hotel could proactively raise the cost of the remaining rooms and increase their revenue for the nights in question.

4 Reasons Why Hoteliers Should Pay Attention to Booking Pace

Analyzing booking pace allows hotel owners to identify trends, making it easier to forecast future demand. With an accurate idea of guest bookings, it’s possible to make better decisions about pricing, inventory and staffing to make sure you’re operating efficiently.

 
1. Adjust pricing strategically: Predictive analytics continue to gain popularity in the hospitality industry, so preparing for both peak and off-peak periods can help you remain competitive and maximize revenue. For example, if bookings lag around a specific date, you can consider offering promotions during these periods and increasing prices around times with higher demand.
 
2. Manage inventory proactively: Hotels may experience an influx of similar guest demographics around certain events, such as having many families visiting around a national holiday. It can be helpful to proactively manage inventory around these times to ensure that certain room types (such as suites or apartment-style accommodations) don’t get overbooked.
 
3. Schedule staff dynamically: When you have a general idea of the forecasted occupancy for given dates, it becomes much easier to understand the staffing needs likely required during certain periods. This allows you to allocate the appropriate number of staff for specific periods, reducing overhead while still giving guests an exceptional experience.
 
4. Predict future earnings: By understanding your booking pace rates throughout the year, it’s possible to better predict future reservations. With enough data, it’s even possible to gain more insights into your hotel’s entire year and predict earnings more accurately.

You've mastered the art of booking pace, but have you fully tapped into the potential of post-booking revenue? Book a demo today to learn how Canary optimizes your bookings, increases your upsell revenue and elevates your hotel's entire revenue management game.