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How holiday calendar shifts can skew weekly travel comps

A calendar shift can move holiday travel into a different comparison week than the year before, making one week look weak and the next look strong. A positive result shows the direction of the comparison, not the size of the gain.

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By MarketScale Newsroom · · CostarStr BenchmarkHotel PerformanceU.s. Hotel Industry
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How holiday calendar shifts can skew weekly travel comps

Key takeaways

01

Calendar shifts can alter the comparability of weekly travel metrics year over year.

02

Misaligned holiday weeks can make a week look weak in year-over-year comparisons and the adjacent week look strong.

03

Forecasting models should include festival dates and holiday placement as named line items.

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A holiday in a different week

A calendar shift can move holiday travel into a different comparison week than the year before, which can make one week look weak and the next look strong.

Before treating a weekly drop as soft demand, check whether a holiday moved between this year's week and last year's. If it did, look at the weeks on either side of it together.

The positive result has limits, though. A positive label shows the direction of the comparison, not how big the gain was.

August records followed the event calendar

The Labor Day lesson carries over to forecasting. For commercial teams building next year's budgets, festival dates and holiday placement belong in the model as named line items, because a single event week can move a market's month.

The dataset behind the weekly number

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