Condition is best determined by actually spending the night and making observations. Determining occupancy rates is a little trickier since most motel managers are probably going to tell a consultant where he or she can go if asked to reveal the motel occupancy rate. One way to determine the occupancy rate is a late night parking lot survey. The consultant actually counts the vehicles in the lot, making note of whether the tag is local or out of the area. This will provide a good idea of whether the motel is pulling customers from the local area or the interstate.
Circumstances vary for each study, but generally there is one room occupied per vehicle.
Therefore if a parking lot has 40 cars at midnight there are probably 40 rooms occupied. A good survey will include numerous surveys on different nights of the week. Now it s time to determine market share. This is done by adding all of the occupied rooms at each motel and comparing the number to the total rooms. Estimating demand is more art than science.