Dear WuBookers, among the many parameters to monitor in order to improve hotel revenue is the booking window. This value is very important for predicting market trends and selling more (and better). Let’s find out together what the booking window is and how it can be calculated and exploited.

Booking window in hotels: what it is

The booking window is the time interval between the reservation and the first day of the stay. For example: if a customer makes a reservation on February 1 for a stay beginning on June 1, their booking window will be 4 months.

Knowing the average reservation window of a hotel helps to plan promotional activities well in advance and to offer attractive deals and prices to the most receptive customers at a given time.

The reservation window is therefore valuable data that should not be confused with another equally important parameter: hotel pickup. The latter indicates the number of rooms sold (or the number of reservations received) in a specific booking window and can be expressed in figures or as a percentage.

By analyzing both of these indicators, it is possible to obtain essential information about travelers’ booking habits and occupancy trends in order to better plan your sales strategies.

Why is it useful to know the booking window?

As you can imagine, not all customers book at the same time, and not all weeks of the year receive the same level of interest. For this reason, it is necessary to refer to an average: by analyzing the history of reservations acquired, you can obtain the average advance for each period and use it to your advantage. Here’s how.

Increase revenue during peak periods

Let’s imagine we manage a property located in a seaside resort, which sells mainly in the summer. We have found that the average reservation window for the week of Ferragosto (mid-August) – the high season – is 60 days. This means that potential guests make their reservations around June 15, and it is likely that the same happens with the competition. So this is a good time to invest in visibility with paid marketing campaigns and try to sell more at higher rates: demand will be high and available solutions will soon start to become scarce, leading to price increases.

Be careful not to sell out all your rooms too far in advance, though! Being fully booked for months can be a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it avoids the risk of unsold rooms, but on the other, it can cause a loss of revenue (as we said before, the fewer rooms there are available, the more likely they are to sell at a high price, so why fill them all up right away?).

Knowing the average time frame before the start of a stay allows you to adjust pricing dynamically and thus increase hotel revenue.

Boosting the low season

The booking window also allows you to better cope with the low season. Usually, before and after peak periods, there tends to be a significant drop in demand. If you know that the average reservation interval for these periods is, for example, 15 days, you can focus your promotional activities on this time frame in an attempt to boost your bottom line. You could send emails with special offers or launch advertising campaigns on online channels to encourage discounted reservations.

Another important piece of information concerns last-minute reservations: if your property often receives requests close to arrival, it is essential to set up an ad hoc rate to get the most out of last-minute travelers.

Identify the best channels and products to invest in

Finally, there is one last aspect to consider: sales channels. The booking window is not necessarily the same on all portals. Analysis of this index may reveal different trends, which can be exploited in various ways. Let’s assume that those who use the hotel website book well in advance compared to those who buy on OTAs: in this case, we should diversify promotional activities and their activation periods. For example, we could decide to sponsor the hotel on Google Ads to attract direct reservations weeks or months in advance and only launch campaigns on agency websites at a later stage, when demand starts to grow there too.

Going into more detail, we can then obtain useful data on the type of room most requested in a specific booking window or on the most active customers. By doing so, we will know which products to focus on and when, or which communication levers to use. Is the most popular solution 30 days in advance a double room with dinner included? Excellent: it will be appropriate to create similar packages and push those.

Is the segment of the public most likely to book made up of families with children? Then we will have to create messages and offers tailored to them to stimulate purchases. And so on.

3 factors that influence the booking window

The booking window is the result of an average of all reservations, but it does not remain constant over time, and some impromptu factors can affect sales timing more than others.

Among the main aspects that influence the reservation window are:

• events, conferences, and public initiatives: concerts, fairs, or other events can attract several hundred people and thus change the reservation calendar compared to the typical trend, increasing demand even in unusual periods;
• the origin of guests, in two ways: holidays related to the country of origin, which may differ from those of the destination; the time needed to reach the destination. In fact, those who have to travel long distances are likely to plan their trip further in advance than those who are only a few hours away. Knowing who our guests are and where they come from is therefore an essential element when it comes to the booking window;
• the weather. Especially for properties linked to seasonality (ski resorts, for example) or the presence of natural attractions (think of a hotel that offers scenic excursions), the climate can also influence how far in advance reservations are made.

Considering these factors helps to predict how far in advance reservations will be made, but also to explain possible variations that may seem unusual compared to historical data.

How to calculate the booking window? With Zak!

So far, we have seen what the booking window is and what its advantages are for better revenue management. But how do you calculate the booking window? The easiest way to do this and take advantage of it is through the PMS (Property Management System). Software such as Zak, WuBook’s software for hotels and properties, allow you to receive, record, and monitor reservations and, therefore, also provide a complete overview of their performance over time.

In the Performance Statistics area, Zak provides a wealth of data, including the average booking window for each day, month, or year, as chosen by the hotelier.

Not only that, but it is also possible to filter the results by different parameters, such as room and sales portal, and thus obtain important information on the most popular accommodation and the performance of individual channels. This information, as we said, can be used to plan targeted actions and campaigns.

Zak also allows you to assign a custom label to each reservation (e.g., “business,” “leisure,” “family,” etc.) and view the results for those selected. With just a few clicks, you can obtain details on the booking window and target audience, which are useful for those involved in promotion and revenue management.

The booking window is a fundamental piece of data, which a PMS such as Zak allows you to calculate accurately and cross-reference with many other indicators to optimize resources and investments. Knowing your hotel’s booking window helps you focus your efforts when and where they are needed, minimizing waste and maximizing revenue.