How to increase your hotel's occupancy, night by night

Occupancy is the rooms you sold divided by the rooms you had to sell, over a night, a week or a month. A month's figure hides the pattern, so break it down before you change anything.

1. 1Take the past twelve months of stays from the system your front desk books rooms in, or from your register.
2. 2For each month, count the rooms sold and the rooms you had: your rooms multiplied by the nights in the month.
3. 3Do the same for each night of the week. Leave out festival and holiday nights, which are busy for reasons of their own.
4. 4For a sample of bookings, note how many days before the stay each one was made. That is how far ahead your guests book.
5. 5Sort the empty nights by kind: quiet weekdays, quiet weekends, a low-season month, or nights that were booked and then cancelled.

On Booking.com, the extranet's Analytics tab has much of this ready. The Pace Report compares your bookings for future dates with previous years, Bookwindow information shows how far ahead guests book, Demand data shows when travellers plan to visit your city and for how long, and Booker insights shows which countries your guests book from and why they travel.

An empty night is not always a price problem. Before you cut a price, look at your hotel the way a guest choosing between you and your neighbours does:

• Your price beside theirs on Google, for the same night. Your Business Profile's Performance page compares your prices with those of other hotels people viewed, and its overview shows the average of the cheapest price across sites for the next 30 days.
• Where you sit in each booking site's list for your town, for a weekday and for a Saturday. A hotel on the third page is rarely booked, at any price.
• Your photos, your rating and your latest reviews beside theirs.
• Whether a booking site sells your room for less than your own website does, which sends the guest there and costs you its commission.
• Whether your cancellation terms and meals match theirs. A non-refundable price beside a neighbour's free cancellation is a different offer.

If the hotels around you are full on the nights you are empty, price may not be the reason. Fix what the guest sees first.

• Load your prices and rooms well ahead. Booking.com advises adding dates to your calendar up to 24 months ahead, so that you show up when travellers search and book early.
• Check your occupancy settings. Booking.com asks partners to show accurately how many beds and rooms they offer.
• Offer at least two prices for each room: one with free cancellation and one non-refundable. Booking.com says partners who offer both receive more bookings on average, because the pair suits guests who want flexibility and those who book early for a lower price.
• Look for old restrictions. A minimum stay or a closed date set months ago can leave nights nobody can book. Booking.com says a rate plan may not show in search because of restrictions added later, and suggests its rules that adjust them by themselves.
• Turn on auto-replenishment on Booking.com, so that a cancelled room goes back on sale at once: go to Rates & Availability, click Calendar, go to Auto-replenishment, then choose Yes. On MakeMyTrip and Goibibo, a cancelled room goes back on sale automatically.

Most hotels have nights of the week that fill and nights that don't. Give the quiet ones a reason to book, rather than lowering every night's price. On MakeMyTrip and Goibibo, a Day Based Promotion gives a discount only on the days you choose. In the InGo-MMT extranet:

1. 1Click “Promotions & Coupon” under the “Grow Your Business” tab.
2. 2Click “Create Promotion” and choose the Day Based Promotion.
3. 3Choose a flat or a percentage discount, and enter it.
4. 4Select the days of the week it applies to. You can add another promotion for other days.
5. 5Under Advanced settings, add any restrictions, then save the changes.

On Booking.com you can't make a rate plan only for weekends or for a season, but its help says to set different prices for chosen days of the week in the extranet's Calendar. Agoda Growth Express can be aimed at weekday stays, which Agoda counts as Sunday to Thursday, in return for extra commission on the bookings its campaign brings. Then go after the guests who travel midweek:

• Companies near you. MakeMyTrip's myBiz programme brings corporate bookings to a property with a GST number that agrees to upload its GST invoices to the extranet. Ask your Business Manager to turn on the myBiz agreement, then set prices and rooms under the “myBiz” tab of the “Calendar View”, under “Rates & Inventory”.
• Travel agents. MakeMyTrip's myPartner network shows a special price to travel agents only: click the “Performance Booster” tab, choose “Grow with travel agent network” and set the discount.
• Conferences, training groups and weddings, which often book weekdays when weekends are taken. Our guides on bookings from companies and travel agents, and on wedding and event bookings, go further.

• Longer stays. Booking.com's long-stay rate plans are for travellers searching for seven days or more, with weekly prices and monthly ones for 28 days or more, and it points out that fewer check-ins mean less cleaning. MakeMyTrip's Long Stay Promotion gives a discount for a minimum stay you choose, from 2 to 30 nights.
• Guests from nearby cities, at the weekend. A family a drive away is the guest most likely to come at short notice in a quiet month, and a third night, breakfast or a later check-out on Sunday gives them more reason to come than a lower price everyone sees.
• Guests from other places. Booking.com's Country Rates give a discount to guests from the countries and regions you choose, and its Booker insights show where your guests already come from.
• Events in your town. A trade fair, a cricket match, a festival or an examination fills hotels in the low season too. Put them in your calendar and price those nights as busy ones.
• Rising searches. Google Trends, which is free, shows how interest in a search such as your town's name with the word hotel moves through the year, on a scale of 0 to 100. Google says it is a sample of searches and not a perfect mirror of them, so read it beside your own bookings.

Booking.com also runs deals at set times of year, where your extranet offers them: the Early Year Deal for stays at the start of the year, the Getaway Deal for stays between March and September and the Late Escape Deal for the end of the year. Join the ones that fall in your own quiet months, and leave the ones that fall in your busy months.

Rooms still empty a few days before the night can still sell, to guests who book late:

• MakeMyTrip's Last Minute Promotion is for guests booking up to two days before check-in. Under “Grow Your Business”, click “Promotions”, then “Create New Promotion”, choose Last Minute Promotion, set the discount and the bookable period, set the dates under “Specify Promotion Validity”, add any limits under Advanced settings, preview it and click “Create Promotion”.
• Booking.com's Last-minute Deal is for travellers who want to travel at short notice. Set it up under Promotions, then Choose new promotion.
• Booking.com's Visibility Booster raises your commission on the dates you pick, for travellers from the country you pick, to put you higher in its search for those dates. Booking.com suggests it for dates with many rooms left, and after cancellations.
• Agoda Growth Express can be aimed at bookings made less than a set number of days or weeks ahead.
• MakeMyTrip's Hourly Stays sell a room for 3 or 6 hours, and 9 if you choose, to travellers in transit, pilgrims and business travellers. You find it under the “New Offerings” tab, as “Hourly Stays”.

To use the Visibility Booster on Booking.com:

1. 1Sign in to the extranet and select Boost performance, then Visibility Booster.
2. 2Choose the check-in dates to boost.
3. 3Under Pick a country, choose which travellers to reach.
4. 4Choose the commission rate with the slider.
5. 5Click Apply new commission rate.

Last-minute discounts teach regular guests to wait. Keep them for nights that are truly left over, and keep your usual price on nights that are filling.

• Google. Keep your Business Profile complete and correct: Google says local results depend on relevance, distance and prominence, and that more reviews and good ratings can help. Then show your own price beside the booking sites' with free booking links. Google charges nothing for them and ranks them on what travellers prefer, the value offered, the page they lead to and how accurate your prices have been, never on payment. Google's help says it can't connect hotels directly for now, so you send your prices through a connectivity partner, such as your booking engine, channel manager or front desk system.
• Phones. Booking.com's Mobile Rates give a discount to guests who book on a phone.
• Booking.com's Genius programme, a discount for its loyal members, for properties that meet its rules.
• Your page on each site. MakeMyTrip says your place in its search may depend on your Content Score, among other things, and that photos count most in it, along with at least 20 amenities, your property rules and your room details. Open “Content Score” under the Property tab to see the tasks left.

The guests who stayed before already know you, and a booking from them costs no commission. Before each quiet month:

1. 1Make a list of past guests who agreed to hear from you, with when they came and how they booked.
2. 2Choose the dates you want to fill and one reason to come then: a third night, breakfast included, a later check-out, a festival meal.
3. 3Send it a few weeks ahead, by email or on WhatsApp, with a link to book on your own website or a number to call.
4. 4Give regular guests and the companies that send you staff a direct contact, so that they don't need a booking site to reach you.

Send offers only to guests who asked to hear from you, and check them against your contracts with the booking sites. Our guide on getting more direct bookings goes further.

• Compare each month's occupancy with the same month last year, not with last month.
• Read it beside your average room rate. Rooms filled with a lower price can leave you with less than before. RevPAR, your room revenue divided by every room you had, shows whether the two together went up.
• Look at each night of the week and each kind of empty night on its own, to see which fix worked.
• Change one thing at a time, so that you know which one it was.
• Note what each booking site's programme cost you in extra commission or discount, beside the rooms it brought.