How to Maximize Hotel Revenue During High-Profile Events

When travelers come to town for special events, hotels have a major revenue opportunity. But capitalizing on it requires a smart strategy.

When a major event comes to town, hotel demand can skyrocket. Whether it’s a global conference, a championship game, or a sold-out stadium tour, these moments present a unique opportunity to grow revenue—if you’re prepared.

Take Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans. Hotels filled fast, and rates surged to $560 per night at key booking windows. But earlier in the booking cycle, many rooms sold for just $375. That $185 difference, multiplied across rooms and nights, adds up fast.

Missed opportunities like these show why a strong revenue strategy matters. With the right insights, you can price confidently, meet demand as it builds, and make the most of every guest who walks through your door.

Start with smarter demand forecasting

You know demand will rise during a major event. The challenge is understanding how much it will rise, when it will start building and what that means for your pricing and distribution strategy.

Smarter demand forecasting gives you a clearer view of traveler behavior, helping you anticipate patterns instead of reacting to them. For most hoteliers, that often starts with tracking flight and hotel searches, analyzing booking windows and watching for early signs of interest.

For example, if a spike in OTA searches shows that many winter travelers are filtering for hotels with heated pools and your hotel fits that profile, that detail becomes a strategic asset. You can adjust your messaging and offers accordingly before your competitors catch on.

With real-time performance data, you can make decisions based on what’s actually happening in the market, not guesswork or outdated trends.

Learn from the past (if you can)

Recurring events like annual festivals or trade shows offer valuable data you can use to plan ahead. If your hotel has hosted guests during the same event in previous years, don’t guess—look at the numbers. How did you perform? How did the rest of your market perform?

With tools like Lighthouse’s Benchmark Insight, you can compare stay dates, pickups, and segments to identify trends in booking behavior and demand. This helps you spot where you were strong, where you fell short and where there’s room to improve.

Even if you don’t have a detailed reporting system in place, general reports can still offer valuable insight. Compare your current occupancy, ADR and booking pace to the same period last year. If your rate is higher than competitors but your pace is behind, you might consider adjusting prices to build a stronger base and avoid last-minute discounting.

Get creative for one-off events

Independent hoteliers have the flexibility to go off-book when it counts, unlike larger brands that often face multiple layers of approval. That agility is a real advantage when you’re planning for one-off events without historical data to guide you.

Benchmark tools can help fill in the gaps by giving you real-time data on how you’re performing compared to competitors. If you see demand around certain locations, like major transit hubs, you can adjust your messaging to highlight your proximity.

You can also tap into your professional network. Chances are, someone in your circle has hosted guests for a similar event in another city. Whether their strategy succeeded or not, their perspective can help shape a smarter approach for your own hotel.

Tailor your strategy to the type of event 

Not all events attract the same crowd or drive the same kind of demand. A book festival and a jazz festival may draw different types of travelers with different booking habits. Once-in-a-lifetime events, like a popular band’s final tour or a rare solar eclipse, can drive urgency and push travelers past their usual price sensitivities. To maximize revenue, it’s important to understand who’s coming, what matters to them and how they plan to stay.

Understand event length and peak nights 

The duration of an event shapes how guests plan their trips and which nights are in highest demand.

Take the draft pick, for example. A traveler might pay $1,000 on the opening night but leave early rather than pay the same rate for later rounds. That’s why tracking search and booking patterns matters: they help you anticipate which nights will sell first.

Once you’ve identified peak nights, you can set minimum stay requirements and limit check-ins on certain days. For example, if the event begins Friday, a two-night minimum starting Thursday helps protect those high-demand nights and avoid stacking arrivals on a single day.

Track short-notice demand spikes 

Surprise demand can lead to missed revenue if you’re not watching closely. A concert announced two weeks ago can trigger a sudden rush of bookings, and if you’re not ready, you might end up selling rooms well below their potential value.

That’s why staying alert to booking trends is essential. Lighthouse’s heat mapping tools make it easy to spot unexpected spikes, showing where and when reservations are picking up in real time.

As reservations surge, you’ll receive real-time alerts, giving you a chance to pause availability, investigate the cause, and recalibrate. Once you understand what’s driving demand, you can adjust your pricing, packages or messaging to align with guest intent and maximize revenue.

No one can predict every event. But with the right tools in place, you can respond quickly and make smarter decisions before leaving money on the table.

Fine-tune your pricing strategy with dynamic tools 

The right pricing strategy helps you hit a sweet spot: you’re not turning guests away with overpriced rooms, and you’re not missing revenue with underpriced inventory.

Dynamic pricing tools can adjust rates based on demand, allowing you to stay aligned with the market while showcasing your hotel’s unique value. They also support modern revenue tactics like controlled overbooking. With Lighthouse, you can set overbooking limits within a flexible system, giving you multiple ways to experiment for a better experience on both sides. 

For example, a hotelier with a generous cancellation policy might oversell by 3%, ensuring they can make up the revenue if (or, more likely, when) travelers cancel or fail to show up. A stricter no-refunds policy might mean overselling by just 1%, or not at all, since revenue is already secured.

Another common pitfall? Dropping rates right before the event to fill rooms. That typically means prices were set too high early on and didn’t convert. A better approach is to increase your base occupancy well in advance. If you only need to sell 10 rooms the week before the event, you’re in a much stronger position than if you still have 50 to fill. 

As you adjust your strategy, keep in mind that your pricing goals may differ from those of your competitors. Just because competitors are charging $1,000 a night doesn’t mean they’re filling rooms or that you should match them. They could be sitting at 20% occupancy while you’re pacing toward a stronger sellout. Let your property’s typical performance, demand patterns and strengths guide your decisions.

With Lighthouse, you can see how your compset is performing and adjust accordingly. Once you’ve got a solid foundation, you can price with purpose—backed by market data, not guesswork.

Set floors and ceilings, then let systems adapt 

If you can’t monitor prices around the clock, setting minimum and maximum rates gives you control without needing constant oversight. Dynamic pricing tools can then adjust your rates within that range based on real-time demand. 

For example, instead of locking in a flat $199 rate, you might set a floor of $149 and a ceiling of $249. The system will then shift prices as needed to stay competitive and maximize revenue. This approach is especially valuable if you manage multiple properties. 

Tools like Lighthouse help you stay responsive to demand changes while freeing up time to focus on strategy and guest experience, not manual pricing updates.

Input event signals for smarter rate decisions 

The best pricing tools don’t just react to demand. They help you plan for it. By inputting event details, like the dates of an upcoming food festival, you can signal to the system that demand will likely spike. From there, the platform can adjust your rates accordingly using historical data and benchmark insights.

Instead of scrambling after an announcement, you’re ready with rates that reflect both the market and your goals. Sharing those signals early gives your system the context it needs to optimize pricing and helps you make rate decisions that support both your business and clientele. 

Maximize your OTA and distribution strategy 

Major events bring major visibility. OTAs can help fill rooms fast, but during peak demand, they should support your strategy, not drive discounts. 

This might be the right time to invest in accelerators that boost your hotel’s visibility on platforms like Expedia or Priceline. But it’s also smart to remove deep discounts, close out opaque rates, and pause corporate or promo offers that don’t align with elevated demand. 

Use OTAs to increase brand exposure, then guide guests toward your direct channels. If you want to incentivize direct bookings, consider offering a small discount to offset the OTA’s commission. This way, you shift guest loyalty away from big-name sites and toward your independent hotel. 

It’s worth noting that discounts can still be useful, but they should match the moment. A 5% discount for early bookers—say, 45+ days before the event—adds value without undercutting your rate strategy.

Distinguish your property and elevate guest experience

When guests pay premium rates, they expect a premium experience. Small touches like early check-in, themed amenities, or custom welcome gifts can tie into the spirit of the event and make their stay feel memorable and worthwhile.

Hosting Formula 1 fans? Consider crafting signature cocktails after popular drivers. Welcoming music festival attendees? A gift bag inspired by headliners could hit the right note. Even simple gestures, such as asking if a guest is celebrating an occasion of their own (e.g., an anniversary or birthday), can make a lasting impression.

These extras help reinforce your brand identity and turn one-time visitors into future guests. Big events may bring new faces, but standout experiences are what bring people back.

Collaborate across teams for seamless execution 

Event success isn’t just about smart pricing and automation. It takes coordination across operations, revenue, sales and the front desk to make it all work.

Start with clear communication. When everyone understands inventory strategy, rate policies, and distribution plans, your hotel can move as a unit. That’s especially important if your revenue manager isn’t on-site, which is often the case for independent properties. If your general manager, front desk and sales team don’t know the plan, they’ll be lost when unexpected issues come up.

For example, if last-minute guests walk in during a busy weekend, and you’ve had cancellations or no-shows, your front desk needs the flexibility to offer walk-in rates based on real-time inventory and pricing guidelines. They don’t need an exact number, but they do need a range they can work with.

Without that kind of collaboration, it’s easy to leave revenue on the table. Clear, proactive communication helps you make the most of every room, even when things don’t go according to plan.

Make the most of major events with competitive data insights 

Big events bring big opportunities, but only if you can act on them in time. Without the right data, hoteliers risk missing early booking signals, mispricing inventory or losing out to competitors who spotted demand sooner. Those missed chances don’t just hurt revenue today, but also impact guest relationships and performance for seasons to come.

Lighthouse brings together real-time demand tracking, competitor benchmarking and pricing tools to help you make confident, timely decisions. With solutions like Market Insight and Benchmark Insight, you can spot booking trends early, track how your compset is performing and adjust rates before it’s too late. Whether you’re preparing for a recurring event or reacting to a surprise announcement, Lighthouse gives you the clarity to stay ahead and the tools to act fast.

Adam Swart

Adam is the VP of Content Operations at Lighthouse, leading content strategy and production for Lighthouse’s clients. Connect with Adam on LinkedIn.

About Lighthouse

Lighthouse (formerly OTA Insight) is the leading commercial platform for the travel & hospitality industry. We transform complexity into confidence by providing actionable market insights, business intelligence, and pricing tools that maximize revenue growth. We continually innovate to deliver the best platform for hospitality professionals to price more effectively, measure performance more efficiently, and understand the market in new ways.

Trusted by over 65,000 hotels in 185 countries, Lighthouse is the only solution that provides real-time hotel and short-term rental data in a single platform. We strive to deliver the best possible experience with unmatched customer service. We consider our clients as true partners – their success is our success.

This article originally appeared on Lighthouse.