Trends Q: ADR vs LOS: does staying longer always get resort guests a better daily rate?

Four weeks ago we took a hard look at whether advance-bookers were paying more or less each day than the last-minute crowd. This week, we want to add another layer to this analysis by looking at whether people who are staying longer are paying more or less than those who only stay a night or two. Here’s what we found.

The Goods
We used the same 5 years of lodging data from 10 different mountain destinations that we used for the previous analysis. Only this time, we grouped the data by length-of-stay instead of booking-window.

Again, we compared the ADR of each length-of-stay to the average ADR of the sample. So, if the average ADR was $200 and I booked a 5 night vacation at $220 a night, I would have paid +10% above the average. Here’s how it looks:

In the long run, for every day longer a guest stays the lower the average daily rate of their reservation. That trend, however, doesn’t start until a guest is staying around 4 nights. Up to that point, the curve is reserved with shorter stays seeing lower lower daily rates.

What This Means
In the first analysis between lead time and ADR, longer booking windows correlated to higher daily rates. This likely influences the results we see here as people who plan further in advance tend to say longer than last minute bookers.

The interesting thing is how the daily rate peaks at an LOS of 4. This seems to represent the gap between last minute discounts and extended stay deals. These guests are staying long enough to require more planning and an early reservation but short enough to not earn some of the discounts that come with longer stays at the resort.

Onward and Upward
We’ve got another Stash insight like this one already in the works for next week. If you want it waiting in your inbox on Tuesday morning, stick your email below.