The reservation agents at the 150 units of the Fine Family Motels chain worked hard, but the chain's occupancy rate seemed to keep drifting lower. When that rate hit 58 percent, management realized that something had to be done.
While most locations had an acceptable occupancy rate, a few low-occupancy locations pulled down the over-all rate. Unfortunately, the low-occupancy properties seemed to shift around from month to month. The local reservation agents, travel agents, and airline reservation networks weren't notified of the low-occupancy ares until the problem became acute. The company was willing to offer discounts of up to 50 percent in the low-occupancy properties ti fill rooms, if it could identify them promptly and get the information out to tour organizations, online distributors, travel wholesalers, and other client sources.