Previous year comparison: how well is your session booked compared with last year? 04.11.2026
For operators, sales, management
"Is the second summer week doing better than last year?" The question sounds simple but was hard to answer. Looking at the same date of the previous year does not help, because the summer holidays start on a different day every year. Comparing March 2026 with March 2025 compares sessions that are a different number of days away from their start. The new previous year comparison in your statistics solves this.
The anchor: the same holiday week, the same number of days before the start
For every session Bookacamp finds its counterpart of the previous season: the session in the same week of the school holidays - "summer holidays, week 2" of 2026 against "summer holidays, week 2" of 2025, no matter on which day the holidays begin. Outside the holidays the same calendar week counts. If a camp runs several sessions in parallel, for example for different age groups, Bookacamp tells them apart by their code, even if the code contains the year.
Both sessions are then compared the same number of days before their own start: if your session has 34 bookings 40 days before it begins and its counterpart had 30 bookings 40 days before its start, you are booked 13 % faster than last year.
What the overview shows
Under Statistics > Previous year comparison you see your upcoming sessions or a whole season, grouped by camp:
- the booking pace as a traffic light: green when you are ahead of the previous year, red when you are behind
- booked spots today and of the counterpart at the same point in time - if the capacity changed, the utilisation is compared
- new bookings of the last 7 days, next to those of the previous season in the same period
- a forecast of the occupancy at the start and the day the session is expected to be fully booked
- on request the mean of the last three seasons, so a single unusual year does not distort everything
A click on a session opens its booking curve: the booked spots day by day before the start, overlaid with the curves of the last seasons. The key figures are also part of the analysis of every session.
You stay in control
If the counterpart found automatically does not fit, pick the session of the previous season yourself on the booking curve page. Your choice is kept. When you copy a session of the previous year, Bookacamp remembers it and uses the copy as a hint. If your camp is located in another federal state than your customers, set at the camp whose school holidays the comparison follows.
With dynamic pricing: align prices with the booking pace
If you use dynamic pricing, your rules get a new condition: booking pace compared with the previous season. You set from which lead the price rises, for example from 10 %, and optionally in which period before the start the rule applies. So that a single booking does not drive the price, you also enter how many bookings the previous season needs for the comparison. As with the capacity rule, a raised price is kept when the pace drops again later.
Good to know
The previous year comparison is available in the statistics of every account, there is nothing to switch on. Bookacamp reconstructs the booking curves of past seasons from the booking and cancellation dates, with this update the state is also saved every day. Waiting lists, rebookings and deleted bookings are not visible in the reconstructed curves, the daily values are exact.
Author: Mathias Methner