Booking pace vs. last year: am I ahead or behind?

Guide for Smoobu hosts · approx. 4 min read · Auf Deutsch lesen

It's mid-July, and your revenue for this year is 25 % below last year. Time to panic? Not necessarily — because that comparison is deeply flawed: last year is finished, while your current year still has August, autumn and New Year's Eve ahead. You're comparing a completed puzzle with a half-finished one.

How do I compare my booking pace with last year?

Hotels have used the pace report (booking level comparison) for decades: you don't compare final results, but interim positions at the same cut-off date. In other words: how much revenue for August was already "on the books" on 15 July this year — and how much was it on 15 July last year for that August?

Why does the cut-off comparison matter for vacation rentals?

• Small sample sizes: With 2–10 units, a single large booking shifts the picture. The cut-off comparison across several years smooths that out.
• Booking lead time changes: Guests book earlier or later depending on weather, the economy and portal trends. Only the pace comparison shows whether fewer bookings are "still to come" or genuinely missing.
• Pricing decisions need lead time: Discounts or relaxed minimum stays only work while there's still a booking window open.

How do I build the comparison myself — even by hand?

1. Record the booking date for each reservation (in Smoobu: "created on").
2. Choose a cut-off date — e.g. today, as day + month.
3. For each stay month, sum all bookings created up to that cut-off in each respective year.
4. Line the years up: same months, same cut-off — only now are the numbers fairly comparable.

In a spreadsheet that's a diligent hour per analysis — doable, but nobody does it every week. That's exactly where the pace report fails in practice: not in understanding, but in the manual work.

How does the comparison become a forecast?

The cut-off comparison has a second use: if you know that, historically, e.g. 74 % of August revenue was booked by mid-July, you can extrapolate the likely final result from today's position. "We're 11 % ahead" becomes "August is likely to land at €19,200".