Occupancy Rate Question
 

How do all of you guys who throw out occupancy rates.. ie.. 35% OR; 16% OR etc.. know this?????

do they actually come out and disclose this to you during your stay?

it seems a bit bizarre to me that a property would do this? I would think its proprietary information

67% of all statistics are fabricated.

In the case of my favorite hotel for which I have stayed a couple hundred nights, 100 in the last 3 years, I know the employees well and they commonly tell me when they are at 100%, as they do everybody when you check in and the aren't able to upgrade you. It is less common, but they also tell their weekday occupancy rates (it's a resort) when it naturally fits into a conversation. Like talking with an employee and saying, "Boy this place is dead compared to last weekend". A typical response would be, "Yeah we're only at 40% tonight, but Thursday we jump back up to 80% due to the XYZ conference and/or ABC event, and then we'll be back to 100% for the weekend". The Spa personnel will commonly tell me when it is going to get busy or slow so I can book my appointments accordingly.

It is proprietary information, but knowing the occupancy rate for a few days out of the year is not going to jeopardize the hotel's business. Trust me if the competition wants to know that information, there are a lot easier ways to do it than paying to stay at a competitor's hotel and trying to weasel some information from employees. No one is giving away any secrets the competition isn't already aware of in some form or fashion.

As travel goes, much easier to tell the load factor on specific flight when your on it than occ. rate a hotel you are staying at. Doing a census around the place would be a little creepy... :)

actually hotels will do a "call around" report and ask competition their occupancy and rate...ostensibly so they know to where people can be walked if needed....

i've had people tell me their occupancy...the place i am tonight is less than 30%....with a whopping 10 arrivals...of which 3 showed up in the hour i sat in the lobby waiting for my dinner to show up....took 1.25 hours as opposd to the 45 minutes they said...BUT...the hotel over achieved again and gave me 2 happy little bottles of merlot...for free.....^

I'm just guessing, but I would think that people who stay at a hotel regularly might get an honest answer when saying 'how ya doing tonight/in general' (such as aa or meg). I doubt most FTers 'call around' (although I'm assuming hotels do).

And then of course you get some who point-blank ask (probably in some nice way & NOT telling them they're going to report that % on a public BB. And you all know who I mean. ;) I sincerely doubt the first thing a hotel employee says is, guess what. We're down tonight. Let me tell you the %, and how many have had their hours cut, and how many have been laid off. :rolleyes:

IMO - the occupancy rate could be mentioned lower or higher by the hotel staff depending on what they're trying to convey to the customer, and also in how the question is asked ;) We all know questionnaires (even verbal ones by customers) can be 'skewed' by how the question is asked and/or phrased.

Just my 2cents - but I don't think HQ would be happy about hotel employees giving out % of occupancy. And again, my 2cents. I can probably count on 5 fingers any guest who would actually ask them!

Cheers.

guess i should have explained better........i meant that, while many think it's proprietary info, hotels freely give it to each other....(and when i did it in the past, i told them what it was! didn't fabricate!)

i generally don't ask or dont care unless an associate makes a comment about how busy-or not-it is.........

I'm in the industry, so for me, it's a matter of a phone call to the right person, or knowing the right lingo to ask. Most of the info I garner about house counts has occurs from just normal conversations with hotel contacts, and also a general knowledge of booking patterns.

That being said, I think a lot of people throw around figures that they have gotten from a res. agent, which I can tell you, is most definitely NOT accurate.

This is exactly how I usually find out. The other way is that hotels typically have some of these stats printed out and displayed behind the front desk, often in plain view. Without being too nosy you can usually just glance and see how things look (it helps being able to read upside down!).

Typically I just ask from an employee when exchanging few words.

You can always say that it seems to be dead here - the occupancy must be in the 30's and you normally get an honest corrected version.

In reading the first post or so, I was about to post this but seems you beat me to it :mad: (joking :p).

Checking in at a SAN area MR property last year they had a list of nearby hotels (MR and non-MR) with exactly the number of available rooms for that night listed. They were walking folks to them.

individual property information is proprietary but area information is commonly available (from that those with industry experience can guestimate how a specific hotel is performing to the market)

my question really was referring to FT'ers as opposed to those employees at hotels

It just seems that quite a few on here know the exact occupancy rate in the property they are staying at and I found it a bit bizarre. Now I can where if someone is an employee and posting on here.. duh of course they would know.. if they worked in a hotel and know the people ditto.. i can see the occasional "I overheard the FDC/Mgr say something" but in general I was curious how some specific FT'ers spewing out... well this happens b/c the OR is X%

i was also wondering, is there a way that they find out that I just don't know about... I really don't care myself or even want to know, but asked based on what others post

thanks all for your answers

No, it's that they *think* they know the real numbers, but they don't. Asking an employee, or a Front Desk clerk isn't going to get anyone an accurate house count. Front Desk staff are instructed to tell guests the OR is higher than it actually is, same with res. agents. Line staff generally haven't a clue, or don't understand the impact of the numbers, so they don't keep that info handy, and managers know better than to give out real numbers to guests.

Most of what you are reading is most likely conjecture, or the result of some erroneously received information.