How do I predict sales for a bed and breakfast accommodation which has recently been refurbished and now has double the amount of rooms.
I've compared sales from Oct to March in 2009/2010 to Oct to March 2010/2011 and it fluctuates wildly, some months being 20 odd percent up on the previous year, other months being 15 odd percent below.
I'll be updating the forecast weekly and they will be relying heavily on it, so I need it to be fairly accruate....it's all a bit scarey!!!
Don't know how you can predict for them, they know their business - the low and high seasons for their particular area, what bookings they have in the pipeline, what adverising they are using and how successful it's been in the past. All you have is some historic data based on fewer letting rooms.
As a starting point I would tend to work on seasons as Semsley has stated, however I would also work on a % of occupation at anyone time.
Say if they have 20 rooms, then in the high seasons, I would expect a high occupancy % say 95%, in low say 50%. (you will have to discuss this with the owners for a fair %)
Then you can apply a value to the % of rooms occupied based on the room charges.
Then when you come to update weekly you can bring into the figures the current booking pipeline to give actual room take up each week. This will give a forecast of both expected and actual.
For example, for May 11 estimate you may have 15 rooms booked, then the next week you find that you have 20 rooms booked for may 11, then change this figure to 20 to give an actual forecast.
The problem you have is that you are trying to provide an estimate as well as actual, but you need to have a starting point to work from, from which you can then update and replace estimates with actual.
Merlion has it spot on - I think it is important to make sure your budgets can be flexed. This is where you can build in best and worst case scenarios. i.e. if occupancy increases by 5%, the profit will be x. If it decreases you could look where problems/ savings need to be made.
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