STLY (Same Time Last Year)

STLY (Same Time Last Year) is a benchmarking reference point used in hotel revenue management to compare current booking pace and performance against the equivalent date or period in the prior year, measured at the same point in the booking window. The critical nuance is the phrase "same time" — the comparison is not simply last year's final actuals, but last year's on-the-books position as of the same number of days prior to arrival.

Formula

STLY Value = Metric (e.g. rooms on the books) for the same future arrival date,
             captured on this exact calendar date last year

Example

Today is 21 April 2026. The hotel currently has 120 rooms on the books for 15 June 2026. The STLY figure is the number of rooms it had on the books for 15 June 2025 as of 21 April 2025. If that figure was 95, the property is running +26% ahead of STLY pace, suggesting pricing headroom or an opportunity to tighten availability.

Why it matters

STLY lets revenue managers strip out the noise of absolute occupancy levels and focus on pace — how quickly bookings are accumulating relative to the same booking horizon last year. A hotel tracking consistently above STLY has a stronger case for raising rates; one tracking below may need to stimulate demand or revise its revenue forecast downward. STLY is the default baseline in most Pace Reports and is embedded in forward-looking benchmarking products such as STR's Demand 360.

Note that STLY can be distorted by calendar shifts (e.g. Easter moving between March and April), so revenue managers often apply day-of-week or event-adjusted STLY for more accurate comparisons.

Related

• Pace Report — the primary tool displaying on-the-books data versus STLY and budget targets
• STR Report — uses prior-year actuals; STLY provides the equivalent forward-looking, same-window snapshot
• Pickup — the incremental rooms added since a prior snapshot, often benchmarked against STLY pickup to assess whether demand is building faster or slower than last year