What is your occupancy rate?

Your property’s occupancy rate is one of the most important indicators of success. It is calculated by dividing the total number of rooms occupied by the total number of rooms available times 100, e.g. 75% occupancy.

How Can You Increase Your Occupancy Rate?

To increase your occupancy rate, you can employ strategies using length of stay restrictions.

For example, you can apply a minimum length of stay when you anticipate a period of high demand followed by low demand. You accept longer duration stays and reject shorter duration stays for arrival. It helps you to increase occupancy during the slow period that follows (so that stays in the high demand period ‘spill over’ into the less demanding period).

You can also apply a maximum length of stay when you expect to be able to sell out rooms at higher rates. You don’t accept reservations at specific discounted rates for multiple night stays extending into the sold out period. Guests who want to stay beyond the maximum length of stay period can be charged rack rate for subsequent nights.

Additionally, you can apply closed to arrival dates when you have very high demand, so you expect to reach maximum occupancy through stayovers as opposed to new arrivals. You don’t accept reservations for arrivals on the day in question, and only allow guests staying through from previous nights.

What Tools Do You Need?

Without advanced reporting, a booking engine that allows you to sell your extras and promotions, and a channel manager to ensure you’re selling through as many booking sites as possible, you won’t be able to increase your occupancy rate with efficiency.

With a piece of technology like Little Hotelier in place, you can spend more time running and measuring the success of each promotion you run.