Your November is weak. But is it really your problem?
· 6 min read
Before you cut your price for a weak month, it is worth knowing whether that month is weak only for you. These are two entirely different situations and they call for opposite decisions. If the whole region has a dead November, a price cut buys you nothing — there are no guests anywhere, and you will simply sell the same number of nights for less. If November is weak only at your property, that is a signal worth investigating.
November in Warsaw is not weak at all
The extremes show it best. In the Warsaw region, non-hotel properties recorded 48.3% occupancy in November — against 50.8% in August. The difference is within the noise. A host panicking about November in Warsaw is panicking about something that is not there: this is not a dead season, it is a month almost as good as the peak of summer.
At the other extreme is Olsztyn, with January at 11.4%. There, January is dead for everybody and no price will reverse it. A cut in such a month is not a fight for a guest — it is giving away margin on nights that will not sell anyway.
November occupancy, region by region
| Region | January | August | November |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bydgoszcz, Toruń | 39.1% | 57.5% | 55.3% |
| Warszawa | 31.5% | 50.8% | 48.3% |
| Kołobrzeg, Mielno, Świnoujście, Szczecin | 32.0% | 58.3% | 39.4% |
| Kielce | 23.8% | 38.5% | 33.5% |
| Karpacz, Szklarska Poręba, Wrocław | 31.8% | 47.9% | 31.6% |
| Łódź | 25.5% | 38.8% | 29.7% |
| Katowice, Szczyrk, Wisła | 27.4% | 44.4% | 29.6% |
| Lublin | 21.6% | 39.9% | 28.9% |
| Kraków, Zakopane, Krynica-Zdrój | 33.5% | 49.4% | 26.8% |
| Rzeszów | 23.5% | 44.0% | 25.2% |
| Gdańsk, Gdynia, Sopot, Ustka, Władysławowo | 18.8% | 50.4% | 24.8% |
| Opole | 14.4% | 39.6% | 20.3% |
| Gorzów Wielkopolski, Zielona Góra | 17.0% | 38.0% | 20.1% |
| Poznań | 15.8% | 36.0% | 16.4% |
| Olsztyn | 11.4% | 44.3% | 16.2% |
| Białystok | 15.5% | 44.0% | 15.7% |
Non-hotel properties — apartments, rooms, cabins, farm stays. The last closed year of public statistics.
Why you should not compare these percentages with your own
This is the most important sentence in the piece, because it is the easiest place to draw the wrong conclusion. You count occupied units; public statistics count bed places. A couple staying in an apartment for four is one hundred per cent occupancy to you and fifty per cent to the statistics. Your percentage will therefore almost always be higher — and that does not mean you are beating the region.
That is why one compares shapes, not levels. The question is not whether you have more than the region. It is whether your November stands against your own year the way the region’s November stands against its year. Only that difference means anything, because both sides are measured against themselves.
Three things this data will not tell you
It will not tell you what is happening this month. Public statistics arrive with a delay of several months, so this is a benchmark, not a forecast. It is unfit for pricing a specific night and we do not use it for that.
It will not tell you anything about your city on its own. Monthly data exists only at regional level — we checked whether it can be broken down to the county, and it cannot. That is why Kraków and Zakopane share one figure here.
It will not tell you how much to change your price. Knowing that the region has a weak month tells you what NOT to do. How much to move in the other direction depends on your calendar, events nearby and the day of the week — and we calculate that separately, for every night.
What to do with it
First establish which month is genuinely weak for you — that is, weaker than your region’s rhythm would suggest. That is the only month where looking for the cause at your own property makes sense: photos, description, minimum stay, visibility on the portals.
In the panel we run that comparison for you and show it month by month, together with the spread of the year in your region and the full methodology — including what we do not calculate, and why.