Pearson New International Edition International pcl tp indd 1

Use of Current and Future Data
Historical PMS data are valuable because room demand often follows fairly pre-
dictable patterns. For example, in most business hotels, room demand for Sunday
MANAGING FORECAST DATA
FIGURE 5
Hotel Altoona room types.
Room type
PMS code
No. of rooms
Nonsmoking king
NK
50
Smoking-permitted king
K
50
Nonsmoking double-double
NDD
100
Smoking-permitted double-double
DD
50
Nonsmoking whirlpool
NWH
40
Smoking whirlpool 
WH
8
Bridal suites
BR
2
Total rooms
300
222

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night is less than on Tuesday nights. This historical pattern will likely hold true and
help to yield accurate demand forecasts, unless current data and estimates of future
data dictate otherwise.
Later in this chapter, you will see how a complete demand forecast is assembled.
For now, recognize that the use of historical data alone is generally an ineffective way
to estimate room demand. Consider, for example, the data in Figure 6. In this situa-
tion, if the FOM considered only historical data, he or she could be tempted to esti-
mate room demand for the next Saturday night at approximately 200 rooms (66.6
percent occupancy).