Glossary
Lead time
Also called Booking window
The gap between a booking being made and the stay beginning, used to judge whether current pricing is ahead of or behind demand.
Lead time is the number of days between a reservation and the first night of the stay. Watched as a distribution rather than an average, it is an early warning: a booking window that is shortening usually means the rate is above what the market will commit to in advance.
Track the distribution rather than the mean. A market with a healthy mix of long and short lead times is resilient; one where almost everything arrives inside a week has no forward book to absorb a quiet fortnight, however good the average looks.
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