How to read and analyze the pickup report

How can I correctly analyze the booking trend for my hotel? What is the report that allows me to better plan the hotel season?

We will talk about the pickup report, a tool that allows the hotelier to view the progress of reservations for a certain period compared to a time frame of pickups.

It’s important it is to ensure that this report is not simply “read”, but needs a careful and conscious interpretation.

How to interpret the pickup report

The pickup report is one of the main tools that allow the hotelier to analyze what the booking trends are in a certain time interval.
The correct analysis of this report offers a series of measures and ideas for action that allow the hotelier to plan in the most careful way possible what are periods of high and low turnout.

The pickup report relates two different periods:

• Pickup period;
• Analysis period.

In the pickup period we have a time frame during which we want to know how many reservations have been recorded for an analysis period; in doing so I can see at what pace I received the reservations and any cancellations.

So to give an early example, the pickup allows me to know: “how many and with what trend the bookings for the month of August were recorded in the pickup quarter March, April and May”.

The pickup provides a “photograph” of what the status of day-to-day reservations is.

In the case of the Slope management, the pickup report is divided by days, consequently there is a daily granularity that allows the hotelier to know day by day how many new bookings have been registered. But not only that, day by day it is also possible to know:

• how many cancellations I received for the analysis period;
• the total number of reservations already registered in August;
• the ADR (Average Daily Rate);
• the production of the day.

Pickup report and historical data

The pickup report is therefore presented as a data set, a table that must be interpreted by the hotelier to understand how business is going, also taking into account the history of past years.

Also important is the awareness of the changes that have been made in the sales strategy including, for example, the creation of promotions with non-refundable rates.

For example, if a promotion was created for the period of August in the period of March, the pickup report will show a spike in the graph of the booking curve.