Analyzing the Use of an Advance Booking Curve in Forecasting Hotel Reservations

ABSTRACT

Although there is considerable interest in the advance bookings model as a forecasting method in the hotel industry, there has been little research analyzing the use of an advance booking curve in forecasting hotel reservations. The mainstream of advance booking models reviewed in the literature uses only the bookings-on-hand data on a certain day and ignores the previous booking data. This empirical study analyzes the entire booking data set for one year provided by the Hotel ICON in Hong Kong, and identifies the trends and patterns in the data. The analysis demonstrates the use of an advance booking curve in forecasting hotel reservations at property level.

KEYWORDS:

• Advance bookings model
• revenue management
• forecasting
• booking curve

Additional information

Funding

The work described in this paper was fully supported by SHTM’s Hotel ICON Research Fund of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Project Account Code: Z0G5).

Notes on contributors

Tony Sze Ming Tse

Tony Sze Ming Tse, PhD, School of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 17 Science Museum Road, TST East, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China (E-mail: [email protected]).

Yiu Tung Poon

Yiu Tung Poon, PhD, Department of Mathematics, Iowa State University, 100 Enrollment Services Center, Ames, IA 50011, USA (E-mail: [email protected]).