Understand your booking trends with BookingAnalyzer

Note: BookingAnalyzer is a stand-alone Excel tool you can download here. It's completely free and doesn't require creating a PriceLabs account.

Looking at your own booking history is one of the simplest ways to find opportunities you're currently missing, without changing a single price. BookingAnalyzer takes the reservation data you already have and turns it into a handful of clear charts: when guests book, which days fill first, how far ahead they plan, and how long they typically stay. You don't need to be actively adjusting prices to get value from it. Even a quick look is usually enough to spot something in your own data you hadn't noticed.

How to use BookingAnalyzer in 4 simple steps

1. Export your annual booking data from your PMS, channel manager, or Airbnb. Format the columns as follows:
   • Listing ID: the ID of the property that received the reservation
   • Start Date: the check-in date for the reservation
   • End Date: the check-out date for the reservation
   • Total Amount: the total amount paid for the reservation (whether this includes taxes and fees or not will affect the output metrics accordingly)
   • Booked Time: the date the booking was made
2. Download the BookingAnalyzer spreadsheet and open it. Delete the example data and paste your own data from step 1 into the "Input data" tab (the second tab from the left).
3. Review your booking trends across the numbered tabs, each shown as a simple chart:
   • Seasonal trends: how bookings vary across the year
   • Day of the week trends: how bookings vary by day of the week
   • Far-out vs. close-in: how many days before arrival bookings are typically made
   • Stay length: how long bookings tend to run
   • Daily trends: day-to-day variation
4. Use what you find to adjust pricing, minimum stays, and availability. A quick example from the day-of-week tab: if you notice most bookings start on a Friday, but a booking ending Saturday morning leaves that Saturday night unusually hard to fill, you now have a specific, fixable gap instead of a vague sense that "weekends are fine."

Common patterns and what to do about them

Frequently asked questions

Is BookingAnalyzer really free?

Yes. It's a standalone spreadsheet, not a PriceLabs product feature, so there's no account or subscription needed to use it.

What data do I need before I start?

Just your own reservation history: listing ID, check-in and check-out dates, total amount paid, and the date each booking was made. Most PMS and channel manager exports include all of this.

How is this different from PriceLabs Portfolio Analytics?

BookingAnalyzer is a manual, one-time look at your own past bookings in a spreadsheet. Portfolio Analytics does this automatically and continuously, across your whole portfolio, and adds market comparisons so you can see whether a trend is specific to your listing or happening market-wide. BookingAnalyzer is a good starting point if you manage a handful of listings and want a quick read on your own data; Portfolio Analytics is the better fit once you're tracking this regularly or managing more properties than you want to re-export and re-analyze by hand.

Can this tell me what to charge?

Not directly. It shows you the pattern, not the price. Once you know which dates or days are underperforming, Dynamic Pricing is what actually adjusts your rates for you based on demand, rather than you setting each one manually off a chart.

We hope this helps you find something useful in your own reservation data. Since every market behaves a little differently, don't be surprised if your charts don't look exactly like anyone else's.

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This tool is one part of the fundamentals covered in our complete guide to vacation rental analytics and market data.