The occupancy rate is the share of a hotel's sellable rooms that were sold in a period, written as a percentage. It tells you how full the hotel was.
Formula
Occupancy rate = room nights sold ÷ available room nights × 100
Available room nights are the rooms you could sell multiplied by the nights in the period. Most hotels take rooms that are out of order out of the available count, because nobody could have slept in them.
Worked example
A 12-room guesthouse is open for a 7-night week, so it has 84 available room nights (12 × 7). It sells 63 room nights.
Occupancy rate = 63 ÷ 84 × 100 = 75%
If one room is out of order all week, available room nights drop to 77 and occupancy becomes 63 ÷ 77 = 81.8%.
Why it matters to a small property
Occupancy shows demand. Low occupancy on weekdays and full weekends point to a pricing or marketing gap you can work on. High occupancy all year can mean your prices are too low.
Occupancy says nothing about price. A hotel at 90% can earn less than one at 70% if it sells its rooms cheaply. Read it with ADR, and use RevPAR to see both at once.
On LobbyMind's reservations calendar, each night shows its occupancy above the tape chart, so you see thin nights before they arrive. The Today board shows the day's figure, and the RevPAR calculator works it out for any period.