Excerpt from CoStar
Guests increasingly are booking hotel rooms closer to the date of their stays, including via walk-ins with no notice, forcing hoteliers to be more flexible and plan ahead to manage last-minute demand.
Hotel News Now reached out to hoteliers across different markets and hotel types to gauge successful strategies being implemented to capture demand.
Samy Ghachem, managing director at Sereno Hotels, which has luxury properties in Lake Como, Italy, and St. Barths, said in an email interview that current booking trends "give a whole new meaning to 'more last-minute."'
Bookings across the properties are coming in anywhere from one month out to, more often, one to two weeks and even one to two days out, he said.
Additionally, his hotels are experiencing an increase in walk-in bookings, which staff must be well-positioned for at all times.
"We are also seeing changes in plans or schedules. So, any cancellations are quickly refilled. We are offering more flexibility with reservation system parameters to tighten or loosen minimum-stay requirements, package validity or pricing as needed," Ghachem said.
The Chicago O'Hare market has had strict vaccination mandates in place until just a couple of months ago. Since then, The Rose Hotel Chicago O'Hare, about two miles from the airport, has experienced a "heavy uptick in leads" for group bookings, Emily Likosar, director of sales and catering for The Rose Hotel, said via email.
Bookings for the past two months have been at or near pre-pandemic levels.
Likosar said small groups of less than 15 attendees are trending toward a shorter booking window with the majority of bookings coming in about two to four weeks in advance.
Larger groups, however, are booking two to four months out.
"We are still seeing a good portion of these meetings having a virtual component," she said.
The Rose Hotel protects its inventory for multi-day meeting opportunities as much as possible until they are inside one month from arrival.
"We are regularly monitoring market conditions and pricing groups accordingly. Generally, the further out a group books, the more favorable our rate offerings," she said.
The hotel will call in additional staff to help on days when there's a surge in transient reservations and shuttle demands from flight cancellations.
John Harrison, regional director of sales for Main Street Hospitality, a collection of hotels in the New England region of the U.S., said short-term bookings are trending for both group and leisure guests.
The booking window for groups is at about 90 days out, he said. However, because of such high demand causing a lack of available hotel space, some groups are now looking out a little bit further into the fall.
"We are seeing it mostly in the year for the year right now," he said. "There is some incentive business that's coming back and that is a little bit more lead time, so we are seeing some early stages of 2023 bookings, which is new from the past couple of years."
In terms of transient leisure, Harrison said many of Main Street Hospitality's properties continue to benefit from drive-to demand. This has resulted in a pickup in bookings within seven to 14 days.
"We could see a hotel at 70% occupancy in Newport, but within 14 days people are looking at the weather or planning short term, then we'll see pickup [in bookings] and sell out the property within that seven- to 14-day window," he added.
Leisure guests typically stay from Thursday to Sunday, while corporate business is Monday through Thursday, he said.
However, Harrison noticed a trend of some leisure travelers lengthening their stays, which his team is able to incentivize and encourage. The average length of stay is typically two nights. In the summer, Main Street Hospitality's properties run a promotion with discounts increasing based on length of stay.
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