Booking curve

A booking curve shows how bookings for a single pick-up date build up over the days before it. You plot days before pick-up along the bottom and cars booked (or % of fleet booked) up the side.

Formula

For each pick-up date and each lead time:

Booked share at day d = cars on hire booked so far ÷ cars available that day

Then average the same pick-up weekday or week across past seasons to get a "normal" curve. Comparing this year against it is called pace.

Worked example

Hypothetical. Say you run 50 cars and your normal curve for a mid-November Friday is:

Fourteen days out you're 14 points ahead of normal, about 7 cars. Either something's on that weekend or you're cheaper than the market. Both are reasons to lift price on the cars left, not hold it.

If you were 14 points behind, that's the time to check your market rate index before you cut.

Why it matters for a rental operator

The curve is how you tell a busy date from a quiet one early, while there's still time to act. Final fleet utilisation only tells you afterwards.

You need booking dates and pick-up dates per hire. Most booking systems export both.

See it in Rate Pulse

Rate Pulse doesn't show your bookings or a booking curve. It shows the market's prices for the next 14 pick-up days, which is the other half: whether you're ahead because of demand or because of price. Building curves from your own data is part of our revenue management work.