Lighthouse Quick Takes - Average booking lead time hides 3 hotel guest segments

A 44-day average booking lead time sounds like a clear signal, but it blends 3 completely different traveler types: corporate guests booking 8 days out, leisure guests booking 60 days out and groups booking 80 days or more. In this Lighthouse Quick Take, Blake explores why blended averages like lead time and length of stay can trigger the wrong pricing, marketing and staffing decisions.

Using a hypothetical 200-room hotel, Blake shows how panicking over a 44-day pace gap can lead to discounting demand that was already on its way, and why segment level distributions, not blended averages, are where pricing and marketing decisions actually get made.