{"id":5863,"date":"2022-07-07T14:29:52","date_gmt":"2022-07-07T14:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rentalsunited.spfr.co\/?p=5863"},"modified":"2026-07-20T09:08:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T09:08:28","slug":"pickup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rentalsunited.com\/fr\/blog\/pickup\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Use Pickup in Vacation Rental Revenue Management & Distribution"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Airlines and hotels have been using pickup to inform their revenue management decisions for decades \u2013 but this immensely useful KPI is only just starting to gain traction in vacation rental revenue management<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until recently, vacation rental revenue managers had inelegant solutions \u2013 like complicated Excel sheets \u2013 for creating pickup reports, and much of the work was done intuitively. However, we now have powerful tools that allow us to visualise our daily pickup and take decisions effectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a vacation rental revenue manager, starting your day by looking at your pickup report can be tremendously helpful in giving you a roadmap for the day and spotting dates in your calendar where you need to take action<\/strong>. But what is pickup, and how do you use it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To find out, we asked John deRoulet, Director of Enterprise Sales at dynamic pricing and revenue management platform Wheelhouse<\/a> to share his insight on all things pickup. Let\u2019s get started!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What is pickup?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Pickup indicates how many room nights or how much revenue you\u2019ve sold in a certain period for a given date in the future<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It shows you how your bookings are pacing with stayed-on dates instead of booked-on dates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of people when they look at pacing, they look at sales data,\u201d says John. \u201cFor example, they\u2019ll say: \u2018Today, I sold $10,000 in future room nights.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pickup is reorienting that approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou look at all the days that people could stay in the future and you count up how many rooms or how much revenue each of those days has, and how recently you\u2019ve sold them,\u201d John says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To understand the difference between booked-on sales and stayed-on revenue, let\u2019s take a look at the bar graphs below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Booked-on sales vs stayed-on revenue<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Total revenue booked in the last 14 days for future dates (monthly breakdown). Source: Wheelhouse<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this graph, each bar shows how much revenue has been sold for the periods on the X-axis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, in this particular portfolio, there is nearly $75,000 booked for<\/em> September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis money is actualising in September,\u201d John says. \u201cSo you could say: \u2018I expect to make $75,000 in September\u2019. Or, if you were looking at it in hindsight, you could say \u2018I made $75,000 in September.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knowing the difference between booked-on sales and stayed-on revenue is crucial to maximising your revenue. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While your booked-on sales may be pacing similarly to last year\u2019s, your stayed-on revenue could be pacing behind \u2013 which means you need to make revenue management decisions urgently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\nWeek 1<\/strong><\/td>\nWeek 2<\/strong><\/td>\nWeek 3<\/strong><\/td>\nTotal<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Booked <\/strong>
\n
\non<\/em>
\n<\/strong>
\n (last year)<\/strong><\/td>\n		$10,247<\/td>\n$8,029<\/td>\n$9,250<\/td>\n$27,526<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Booked <\/strong>
\n
\non<\/em>
\n<\/strong>
\n (this year)<\/strong><\/td>\n		$10,530<\/td>\n$7,730<\/td>\n$8,950<\/td>\n$27,210<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Booked <\/strong>
\n
\nfor<\/em>
\n<\/strong>
\n next 30 DBA (last year)<\/strong><\/td>\n		$2,536<\/td>\n$2,210<\/td>\n$1,465<\/td>\n$6,211<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Booked <\/strong>
\n
\nfor<\/em>
\n<\/strong>
\n next 30 DBA (this year)<\/strong><\/td>\n		$1,027<\/td>\n$1,839<\/td>\n$1,795<\/td>\n$4,661<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
Example of similar booked-on pace but differences in stayed-on pace.<\/em><\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Revenue vs booked nights<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Instead of total revenue, some revenue managers like John prefer to look at booked nights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Booked nights \u2013 a surrogate for occupancy \u2013 may be a better metric to use than revenue when you\u2019re grouping together properties that are similar but not the same (we\u2019ll talk about how to group your properties later.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Total number of nights booked in the last 14 days for future dates (monthly breakdown). Source: Wheelhouse<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The concept of pickup is when you start applying booking velocity (i.e. booking pace) to your total revenue or booked nights. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou try to understand, in a certain time period, how much revenue or how many nights you have sold for all your future time periods,\u201d says John.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, you can ask yourself: \u201cHow much did I pick up in the last 14 days?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sticking to the example above, this portfolio has 448 nights on the books for September. In the last 14 days, they sold 34 of those 448 nights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But how does all this help you make better revenue management decisions? Let\u2019s take a look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

How can you use pickup to take actionable revenue management decisions?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To be able to use this data to make pricing decisions, you need to look at specific dates in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you bring it down to a daily level, you can start to get an idea of where all your money is and where you\u2019re not making sales \u2013 which is the most important thing for a revenue manager,\u201d says John.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Total number of nights booked in the last 14 days for future dates (daily breakdown). Source: Wheelhouse<\/em>. CLICK TO ENLARGE<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
Total number of nights booked in the last 7 days for future dates (daily breakdown). Source: Wheelhouse<\/em>. CLICK TO ENLARGE<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
Total number of nights booked in the last 3 days for future dates (daily breakdown). Source: Wheelhouse<\/em>. CLICK TO ENLARGE<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By looking at your booked nights, you can instantly tell where the occupancy gaps are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when you consider the time periods on the X-axis, you can see at a glance how your sales were pacing in the last 14, 7 or 3 days. The combination of this data allows you to make informed revenue management decisions. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor example, if you see a date range in the future that\u2019s getting booked unusually early, you might be able to raise your rates for those dates. Because those dates are not only starting to get more occupancy earlier than you\u2019d expect, but it\u2019s also happening recently,\u201d John says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen, you can look at how those dates are selling week-over-week. If they continue to sell, you can continue to push your rates up. If they don\u2019t continue to sell, you can make a decision: should you lower your rates back down or leave them up and see if they do sell eventually?\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once you know this, you can set a reminder for yourself to check back on those dates later and if they don\u2019t sell, pull the rates back down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s another example using a different portfolio:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Total number of nights booked in the last 7 days for future dates (daily breakdown). Source: Wheelhouse<\/em>. CLICK TO ENLARGE<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As you can see, near-future dates with low occupancy and low pace (where you\u2019ve made limited recent sales) may present an opportunity to lower your rates and capture demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, more far-out dates that are pacing higher (shown by the larger green portions of the bar) than you\u2019d expect may present an opportunity to raise your rates and capture a higher ADR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the day, you will have to set your own guidelines for what pace is high or low, and where you are comfortable seeing your occupancy at any given time \u2013 but that is a conversation for another article!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Portfolio organisation: How to group your properties together<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the most important things about being able to use pickup-based revenue management practices is that you have to learn how to group your properties together based on similarities,\u201d says John.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to revenue manage any volume of units individually. If you look at individual units, you can only extrapolate demand horizontally (on the tape chart): however, that doesn\u2019t always work because the fact that a unit was booked last week doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that it\u2019s going to be booked next week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOn the other hand, when you look at a group of properties, you can start to extrapolate demand vertically (on the tape chart). So if you see that your 4-bedrooms are booking much earlier than you expected them to, that might indicate your 2 and 3 bedrooms will start booking earlier than they usually do, too,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are some best practices to follow when grouping your properties together:<\/p>\n\n\n\n