OCC (Occupancy Rate)
The percentage of available rooms that were actually sold over a given period.
Occupancy rate is the share of a hotel’s available rooms that were actually sold across a given window, a night, a week, a month or a year. It is one half of the rate-volume trade-off (the other being ADR), and a foundational input into RevPAR.
Occupancy is the operational reality check. High ADR with low occupancy still leaves a quiet hotel; high occupancy at low ADR may not pay for the staff. Most revenue managers think about occupancy not in isolation but as one input into a target RevPAR.
Occupancy = Rooms Sold ÷ Rooms Available × 100%
A 100-room property sells 78 rooms tonight. Occupancy = 78 ÷ 100 = 78%.
Note — Rooms out of order (OOO) for maintenance are typically excluded from "rooms available", but always disclose the convention. Complimentary rooms count as sold (they reduce the number of rooms you could have sold).
Where this term shows up in daily operations.
Operational planning, staffing, housekeeping rotas, F&B prep all key off forecast occupancy.
Pricing decisions, when occupancy forecasts run hot, raise BAR; when soft, open up promotions or longer-stay discounts.
Group room block decisions, every group room booked at a discount is a transient room that cannot be sold at rack.
Seasonality analysis, occupancy curves over the year reveal where the marketing budget needs to push hardest.
What people get wrong.
Optimising occupancy at the expense of ADR, selling out at a low rate destroys RevPAR.
Forgetting to exclude OOO rooms when comparing to comp set, which artificially deflates your occupancy.
Reading single-night occupancy as a trend, occupancy needs at least a 7- or 28-day rolling window to filter out day-of-week noise.
Counting house-use rooms (staff, owners, complimentary) as sold without flagging them, distorts both occupancy and ADR comparisons.
live occupancy in HotelBee in HotelBee.
HotelBee’s PMS dashboard surfaces today’s occupancy, forecasted occupancy for the next 30 days, and pickup pace, alongside ADR and RevPAR.
What is a healthy occupancy rate?
It depends on segment and geography. European city-centre hotels typically run at 70-80% annual occupancy; resort properties often sit lower (50-65%) with much higher ADR. The honest benchmark is your own comp set, not a global average.
How do I calculate occupancy for a multi-night stay?
Sum room-nights sold and divide by room-nights available. A 50-room hotel over 7 nights has 350 room-nights available; if you sold 245 of them, occupancy is 70%.
Should occupancy include cancelled bookings?
No. Occupancy reflects rooms actually occupied. Cancellations should appear in a separate cancellation rate metric, and pickup reports track the difference between bookings on the books today versus a week ago.