Forecasting hotel demand: Asia-Pacific’s leading hotels and resorts group

The value of air booking data in forecasting hotel demand

Every hotelier is aware of the correlation between air and hotel bookings, yet too few appreciate the value to be gained from simply understanding that travellers generally book flights before organising accommodation. In fact, using air booking data to forecast hotel demand is a proven and highly effective means of optimising hotel revenue management.

The need for proactive hotel revenue management

Based on the above principle, ForwardKeys helped Asia-Pacific’s leading hotels and resorts group to upgrade its revenue management processes and maximise success. At the time, the company in question owned and/or managed almost 100 hotels through Asia-Pacific, North America, Middle East and Europe, comprising a room inventory of over 40,000. However, before its collaboration with ForwardKeys, it lacked the ability to accurately forecast hotel demand and was managing revenue reactively, based on actual room bookings, rather than proactively.

The ForwardKeys solution

The renowned hotels and resorts group used the ForwardKeys API product to feed data from ForwardKeys’ On-the-book module into its own business intelligence platform. Based on qualified air passenger arrivals, the organisation was able to forecast hotel demand with accurate and reliable results. What’s more, since ForwardKeys’ data distinguishes between booking and travel dates, the hotels and resorts group gained insight into pacing and pick-up, which in turn shed light on booking peaks by market for better informed decision-making and optimised marketing strategies.

“ForwardKeys has given me a fresh perspective for anticipating hotel demand,” said the group’s vice president of revenue management. “With the API feed they developed for my BI platform, I can now centrally manage all these valuable insights.”