Yield management is daily control of room capacities and prices in order to optimise the revPAR (revenues per available room). Strategic forecasting is crucial for this. It is about analysing potential demand and using this to develop a long-term price strategy. History data as empirical values for the future are instrumental forecast factors. This is the basic strategy for revenue management.
Operative forecasting on the other hand focuses on practical implementation and daily adaptation of the strategy. This can be in regards to current market trends that are non-predictable in the long term, but also to the tactical adaptation of price strategy and capacity control, for instance through setting up so-called stay controls. This type of fine-tuning bears endless possibilities for revenue maximisation - in the hotel-owned front office system, but also for countless hotel and reservation portals that are manually maintained or via Channel Manager. An experienced revenue or yield manager is clearly the right person for this job.
Forecasting is based on historical data, thus on demand trends and on consumer behaviour from past customers. The data is continuously stored, analysed and used for future capacity control in hotel revenue management.