School’s Out: How School Holidays Impact Your Business, and How to Use That Data
School’s Out: How School Holidays Impact Your Business, and How to Use That Data
For accommodation providers, staying ahead of demand surges is the difference between maximizing revenue and leaving money on the table. One of the most significant demand drivers is school holidays. Across the United States, there are more than 11,000 school districts, each with unique holiday schedules. That’s 55,000 school holidays, for over 50 million students. Tracking each of these holidays manually is nearly impossible, but leveraging this data effectively can give your business a critical advantage.
Why School Holidays Matter for Your Accommodation Business
School holidays create nationwide and industry-wide shifts in demand. Families plan their vacations around these dates, leading to increased bookings at hotels, resorts, and vacation rentals. Airlines see higher demand, theme parks experience more visitors, and even digital services like gaming platforms experience spikes in traffic.
For accommodation businesses in particular, school holidays represent a golden opportunity to optimize pricing, staffing, and marketing strategies. Many districts have overlapping break periods, meaning a significant percentage of all U.S. students are on break at any given time. By understanding when and where these breaks occur, you can anticipate surges in demand and prepare proactively instead of reacting too late.
PredictHQ transforms what was once a gut-feel assumption about the relationship between school holidays and accommodation demand into scientifically verified insight. With PredictHQ’s relevancy engine Beam, we have cumulatively correlated over 52M days of demand data against over 400,000 school holidays.
PredictHQ provides concrete, data-backed correlations between school holidays and demand surges or lulls. This wealth of data, paired with predictive modeling capabilities, enables precise forecasting and revenue optimization that simple intuition could never achieve.
The Challenge of Tracking School Holidays
With 55,000 school holidays occurring annually across the U.S., it’s easy to see why keeping up with them is overwhelming. Each district sets its own holiday dates, and these schedules vary widely. Some states have standardized school holidays, while others allow districts to determine their own calendars.
Accommodation providers with access to accurate school holiday data can adjust their pricing strategies, optimize resource allocation, and tailor marketing campaigns to target families planning vacations. Conversely, those who fail to track school holidays effectively risk misjudging demand, leading to underpricing or inadequate staffing during peak travel times.
How PredictHQ’s School Holiday Data Gives You the Advantage
PredictHQ provides specialised school holiday data from a single source, the most comprehensive school holiday data in the US, giving you full visibility into these key demand drivers and reducing forecasting error rates. One accommodation business using PredictHQ reported a 14% reduction in error rates after incorporating school holiday data. Here’s what makes our data uniquely powerful:
District-Level Coverage: We track school holidays for all 11,000 school districts in the U.S., which includes 55,000 school holidays per year. This granular data allows you to see precisely when breaks occur and how they might impact your market. With extensive coverage, you’ll never be caught off guard by demand fluctuations tied to school vacations.
Easy to access via API from a single source: We’ve created a Jupyter notebook around how to integrate our school holiday data into your models that will help your Data Science teams get up and running quickly. It includes guides to using our API and data with common Data Science tools and libraries in Python.
Polygons for Accurate Geographic Impact: School holidays don’t just affect one pinpoint location; they influence entire regions. PredictHQ’s polygon feature represents school holidays as geographical shapes, allowing you to accurately assess their impact beyond district boundaries.
Demand Surge Alerts: Our intelligent alerts notify you when school holidays, both locally and nationally, might overlap with other demand surges, giving you a clearer picture of potential peak periods.
Historical Demand Correlation with Beam: Understanding the impact of school holidays on your specific business is easier with Beam, our correlation engine. By analyzing your historical booking data alongside school holiday trends, you can identify patterns and make data-driven decisions for future planning.
How to Use School Holiday Data to Optimize Your Business
In a PredictHQ survey partnering with a top 5 global hotel group, 88% of revenue managers said that external event data would be useful or extremely useful for inventory management and procurement planning, and 90% said that it would be useful or extremely useful for marketing campaigns. Now that you have access to high-quality school holiday data, here’s how you can leverage it to maximize revenue and efficiency for your accommodation business:
1. Refine Pricing Strategies
Hotels that adjust pricing based on demand patterns see higher revenue. With school holiday insights, you can:
Increase rates in anticipation of higher demand during peak holiday periods.
Offer family-friendly packages or promotions targeted at school holiday travelers.
Balance occupancy rates by strategically pricing mid-week stays during school breaks.
2. Improve Staffing and Resource Allocation
Overstaffing during low-demand periods wastes resources, while understaffing during peak times can lead to poor customer experiences. With school holiday data, you can:
Schedule housekeeping, front desk, and restaurant staff more effectively.
Ensure sufficient stock of amenities like extra beds, family-friendly dining options, and childcare services.
Plan maintenance and renovations around low-demand periods.
3. Enhance Marketing Campaigns
Targeted marketing is key to attracting school holiday travelers. By using demand intelligence, you can:
Launch targeted digital advertising campaigns in regions with upcoming school holidays.
Promote early booking discounts for popular holiday periods.
Optimize email campaigns to reach families planning vacations during school breaks.
Gain the Competitive Edge with PredictHQ
In an industry where demand intelligence can make or break revenue potential, having access to precise school holiday data is a game-changer. PredictHQ empowers accommodation businesses with real-time, accurate data so you can proactively manage demand.
You can’t prepare for what you don’t see coming. With PredictHQ’s school holiday insights, your business will always be one step ahead.
Want to see how school holidays will impact your business in 2025? Book a demo with PredictHQ today and start making data-driven decisions.
