OTB in hospitality: Your guide to on-the-books data and why it matters
OTB is one of the most commonly used acronyms in hotel revenue management, and it stands for on-the-books.
On-the-books refers to the confirmed room revenue already secured for future dates. You may also know it as business on books or BOB.
This data is essential for hoteliers, providing critical insights for forecasting, pricing, group sales, and strategic decisions.
While top-of-funnel metrics like forward-looking search data reveal market demand, OTB data connects the dots by showing what’s actually converting into bookings and when.
For hoteliers, leveraging both your own OTB data and market-level insights can refine strategies, identify opportunities, and enable you to respond effectively to shifting demand patterns.
Operating in such a highly competitive market, a smart approach combines forward-looking trends with robust OTB analysis to optimize average daily rate (ADR) and revenue per available room (RevPar), so you stay ahead of the curve.
Keep reading to explore how you can fully take advantage of your OTB data to sharpen your commercial strategy and gain a competitive edge in the hotel industry.
What is OTB data?
Hoteliers use OTB data when looking ahead to see how many rooms are booked and at which rates, on future dates.
In short, it shows the current confirmed occupancy and revenue for these future dates in terms of the total value of room reservations that have been made and are expected to be realized.
Bookings and revenue OTB will change as reservations and cancellations occur, until the arrival date or period. This means that OTB data offers a precise yet ever-changing snapshot of your business. This allows you to assess how current performance aligns with revenue targets and adjust strategies accordingly.
For budget forecasting, OTB data serves as a baseline, helping to identify gaps or opportunities in occupancy and revenue projections.
When combined with historical trends and forward-looking market insights, OTB data empowers you to make informed decisions about pricing adjustments, promotions, and inventory management.
It also aids in evaluating the impact of group bookings, cancellations, or unexpected demand shifts, enabling you to optimize revenue and allocate resources effectively.
In most property management systems (PMS), you can choose to view it in a visualized table or graph by day, week or month.
There are also pricing recommendation tools that can easily display OTB data from your PMS directly in app, as well as your OTB forecast - how much occupancy your hotel is forecasted to close for a specific stay date), and your market OTB. This allows you to view and analyze it directly beside external data and seamlessly assist your forecasting and revenue management process.
How OTB data helps you understand hotel performance
By viewing your hotel’s current occupancy for dates in the future, OTB reservation data allows you to examine your hotel’s business performance, identify need dates and find opportunities to drive more bookings.
Here are three simple ways to use OTB data to analyze your business performance.
Monitor occupancy and understand booking pace
With a clear view of occupancy rates for future dates, you can track how bookings are pacing compared to past performance or industry benchmarks.
The most straightforward way to do this is to compare your OTB business day by day. This shows you how many new bookings have come in and if there have been cancellations.
Track this pick-up momentum along with rate and demand insights to see if you’re getting sufficient reservations and identify underperforming dates.
By analyzing booking pace, you can identify whether demand is on track, lagging, or exceeding expectations, helping you proactively adjust your room rates or launch targeted promotions to capture more bookings.
Recognize the relationship between rates and occupancy
OTB data also sheds light on how your pricing decisions impact occupancy. By plotting your rate evolution against your booking pace, you can analyze the correlation and evaluate whether your current pricing strategy is driving the desired results.
How are they impacting each other? Where can you see opportunities to drive bookings, increase rates or even do both? There’s no single correct approach here.
Your decisions ultimately will depend on your overall strategy and whether you’re pushing for occupancy or higher rates.
If occupancy is low despite competitive pricing, it may signal weak demand or misaligned value perception. Conversely, high occupancy at lower rates might suggest missed opportunities to capture more revenue.
This insight allows for data-driven adjustments, so you are continually optimizing rates and occupancy, and refining your revenue management strategy.
Gain perspective
OTB data provides context by highlighting your position relative to the market, similar seasons, events or same dates last year.
Are competitors achieving stronger booking volumes on similar dates? Is your performance aligned with broader trends, or are there outliers you should investigate?
By combining your OTB data with market insights, you get a well-rounded perspective that enables smarter decision-making and provides you with a competitive edge in your local market.
As you see, using OTB data is a powerful tool for performance analysis and well-informed pricing and distribution choices.
Hoteliers are increasingly expected to do more with fewer resources. Manually gathering and organizing all the necessary data can be incredibly time-consuming, if not outright impossible.
This is where technology comes into play.
Historic vs forward-looking OTB data
As the name implies, historical data looks back. Historical OTB shows performance for a specific date, event or period in the past.
Forward-looking OTB or OTB forecast data highlights your OTB business for a future date - revealing how it’s developing or likely to develop, given market demand and your competitive set.
In the past, both historic and forward-looking OTB were used. However, historic OTB data had more weight since it was reliable, and hotel tech had limited capabilities for leveraging forward-looking information.
Now, innovative tech solutions are able toto offer deeper insights into upcoming demand and booking intent.
OTB forecast in Pricing Manager incorporates an AI machine learning model using multiple factors, such as your historical performance data and current booking trends to calculate occupancy on a specific stay date.
These future-facing insights now play a significant role in understanding emerging demand and forecasting how business will develop at your hotel.
Leveraging OTB analysis to understand your position in the greater market
To understand your hotel’s performance within the broader market, it’s essential to analyze market OTB data. But, what exactly is market OTB data?
Market OTB data provides insights into the confirmed bookings across your destination or competitive set. By examining the same metrics you use for your own property, such as occupancy, booking pace and rates, you can see how the overall market is performing at the city level.
This allows you to compare your hotel’s OTB business against market trends, helping you identify opportunities to capitalize on demand or address gaps in performance.
Understanding how OTB data analysis works
Market OTB data analysis involves three key steps:
1. Track daily pick-up momentum
Monitoring daily booking pick-up for both your hotel and the market helps you see which properties are capturing bookings the fastest. This insight can reveal patterns in traveler behavior and help you adjust your strategy to stay competitive.
2. Analyze the relationship between occupancy trends and rate levels
By comparing occupancy and rate trends across your compset and the market, you can identify who is driving bookings at the most profitable rates.
Plotting your booking pace and rate evolution against your competitors’ data uncovers opportunities to optimize pricing and boost revenue.
3. Identify the "why" behind the results
Dive deeper into your performance metrics to uncover the factors influencing your results. Understanding why certain tactics succeed or fall short allows you to make targeted adjustments that improve outcomes and give you a better chance of hitting your KPIs.
By analyzing market OTB data alongside your own, you get vital context into how your property is performing compared to your competitors.
This holistic approach highlights new opportunities, uncovers potential threats, and ensures your revenue management strategy is data-driven, proactive, and optimized for success.
OTB forward-looking benchmark
Running a hotel is no small feat, and the competition for guests has never been fiercer.
An invaluable advantage in staying ahead of your competition is your ability to accurately track your OTB performance and benchmark it against the market.
Market-level OTB benchmarking combines your property’s OTB data with forward-looking market insights to reveal how demand in the market is converting into bookings for your hotel.
By analyzing this data at the city level, you gain critical insights to refine your strategy and improve business performance.
With OTB benchmarking, you can:
1.Spot early demand signals
Detect surges in market interest early and implement strategies to capture that business before competitors.
2. Understand conversion dynamics
Compare how upper-funnel demand translates into actual bookings for your hotel versus the market.
3. Identify areas for improvement
Are you underperforming on high-demand days? Should you adjust rates or launch promotions to compete more effectively? Do you need to switch your distribution channels?
Without the right tools, OTB benchmarking is a complex and time-intensive task.
Fortunately, solutions like Market Insight simplify this process, offering live OTB data, rate comparisons, and demand trends. These insights empower you to build a smart, data-driven commercial strategy that keeps you ahead of the competition.
Harness the power of OTB analysis to drive hotel revenue
Despite the many changes in the hospitality industry, one aspect remains the same, OTB data continues to be a vital resource for hotel commercial teams.
Thanks to advancements in technology, forward-looking and market OTB data are now more accessible than ever. These tools make it easier to detect emerging booking patterns and analyze performance beyond your own property.
By leveraging market OTB data, you gain a clearer understanding of how demand converts at your hotel and how much business your competitors are capturing. This enables you to benchmark your performance effectively and identify opportunities to improve.
If you want to outperform the competition, integrating OTB insights into your commercial decision making is no longer optional—it’s essential.
Start using these powerful insights with Lighthouse to supercharge your revenue management strategy and stay ahead in today’s dynamic market.
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About Lighthouse
Lighthouse (formerly OTA Insight) is the leading commercial platform for the travel & hospitality industry. We transform complexity into confidence by providing actionable market insights, business intelligence, and pricing tools that maximize revenue growth. We continually innovate to deliver the best platform for hospitality professionals to price more effectively, measure performance more efficiently, and understand the market in new ways. Trusted by over 70,000 hotels in 185 countries, Lighthouse is the only solution that provides real-time hotel and short-term rental data in a single platform. We strive to deliver the best possible experience with unmatched customer service. We consider our clients as true partners—their success is our success. For more information about Lighthouse, please visit: https://www.mylighthouse.com.
