Future bookings are easy to look at. Interpreting them is harder. That’s why Benchmarking Alliance is now making compsets available in On-the-Books, allowing you to benchmark your hotel’s future bookings not only against the full market or geographically, but also against a specific set of competitors.
This article explores what that means in practice, why it matters, and how added context changes how revenue teams think, discuss, decide, and act.
On-the-Books is Benchmarking Alliance’s service for analysing future bookings in a market context. It shows how demand is developing over the coming 365 days, allowing hotels to understand booking pace, pickup, and trends ahead of arrival.
Until now, that forward-looking view has been anchored in a stable, market-wide comparison. But not anymore.
On-the-Books now allows hotels to define their own compsets for future bookings, in the same way they already do for historical benchmarking.
In practical terms, this means you can compare your future booking position not only against the full geographic market, but also against a carefully selected group of relevant competitors. The two perspectives can be viewed side by side, offering both context and precision.
— This is something many of our customers have been asking for. Early on, we deliberately stayed at market level. Today, the service is so popular that there are enough reporting hotels for us to take this to the next level, says Henrik Karlsson, Business Development Manager at Benchmarking Alliance.
The timing matters. A larger reporting base enables more granular analysis while maintaining the same strict standards for data integrity and anonymity.
As a revenue manager, you already work with compsets when analysing historical performance. Until now, however, future bookings have required a different frame of reference.
With compsets now available in On-the-Books, that logic can be extended forward.
You can follow the same comparison group historically and into the future, creating a continuous analytical thread. Instead of translating between different datasets, you work within one consistent context.
— Now you can compare your future booking position with the same group you already use historically. That increases the overall quality of insights and makes the analysis more coherent, says Elin Mengüç, New Business Manager at Benchmarking Alliance.
When context improves, decision-making follows. Being able to view your booking pace against a relevant compset makes it easier to understand whether changes are driven by your own strategy or by broader dynamics. It supports more confident decisions around pricing, segmentation, channel mix, and campaign pressure — all with a forward-looking lens.
Henrik explains:
— This is a tool for evaluating strategy. Not just looking at historical outcomes, but understanding what’s happening ahead.
It also helps sharpen internal dialogue. Conversations about performance move from isolated numbers to shared patterns. From reaction to interpretation.
Revenue management often involves explaining uncertainty. Why bookings look the way they do. Whether a dip is local or structural. If action is needed now, or patience is warranted.
Additional context doesn’t change the numbers, but it does change how those numbers are experienced and explained.
— It helps revenue managers sleep better at night. You can see whether a weaker booking position is shared by your competitors or unique to your hotel, Elin notes.
That same context makes it easier to align internally, whether the conversation is with commercial teams, management, or ownership.
For many hotels, a city-wide benchmark is a strong starting point. For others, it’s only part of the picture. For example, a resort, long stay, or a suburban park-and-stay property often competes within a narrower, more specific segment. Their commercial reality isn’t defined solely by municipal borders.
With compsets in On-the-Books, these hotels can now benchmark their future bookings against the competitors that actually shape guest choice.
— Why should a resort focus on the total booking position of a large city? Now they can focus on a smaller, highly relevant group instead, Henrik says.
Greater analytical flexibility doesn’t come at the expense of governance. Compsets are constructed to ensure that individual hotels can never be identified, and all data is handled in line with the same strict and secure principles that apply across the Benchmarking Alliance platform.
Data is always anonymized, and all automatic collection is done via secure PMS integrations, ensuring both accuracy and integrity without adding manual workload.
— The same secure data handling applies here as everywhere else. Individual hotels can never be isolated, Elin says.
This update doesn’t change how existing users work unless they choose to use it. Market-level comparisons remain exactly as before. Compsets simply add another lens for those who want more precision.
— This is a natural evolution of On-the-Books. Everything continues to work as before, but now there’s an additional option, Henrik says.
As On-the-Books continues to grow, so does the opportunity to deepen insights while keeping the experience familiar and intuitive.
Elin adds:
— It’s a service that has developed significantly over the past few years. That growth is what makes this kind of advancement possible.
By tying together future bookings, historical benchmarking, and market-wide insights, the Benchmarking Alliance platform enables more consistent analysis and stronger revenue decisions over time. Want to see how this works in practice? Book a free demo today to explore how these perspectives come together in one place.