Forecasting and Pace Management for Indian Hotels
How to read booking pace week by week, build a 90-day forecast you actually trust, and act before the rate decision gets expensive.
Most hotels price by feeling. Pace management replaces the feeling with a number: how many room nights are already on the books for a future date, compared with the same point in time last year.
Build the pace view first
For every future date, track three things: rooms on the books, ADR on the books, and the gap to the same lead-in day last year. A 90-day rolling window is enough for city hotels; leisure resorts with wedding and holiday demand need 180 days.
Read the signal, not the noise
- Ahead on rooms, behind on ADR — you sold too cheap too early. Raise the floor for the remaining inventory.
- Behind on rooms, ahead on ADR — you are holding rate well but risk empty nights. Open a lower-fenced rate (advance purchase, longer stay) before you cut the public rate.
- Behind on both — a demand problem, not a pricing problem. Check comp-set rates, event calendars and OTA visibility before discounting.
Forecast in three layers
- Base: last year's actuals for the same day of week, adjusted for your current trailing 90-day index.
- Events: weddings, conferences, festivals, exam dates, flight capacity changes.
- Judgement: known group blocks, renovation, new supply in the comp set.
Write the forecast down before the month starts. A forecast you can compare to actuals teaches you something; one you adjust after the fact teaches you nothing.
The weekly rhythm
A 45-minute pace meeting every Monday is enough: review the next 14 days in detail, the next 90 at summary level, agree three rate actions, and record them. Over a quarter that discipline is worth more than any single clever pricing decision.
What good looks like
Forecast accuracy within 5% at 14 days out, within 10% at 30 days. If you are consistently outside that, the base year data is wrong or the event calendar is incomplete — fix the inputs before blaming the model.