[useful]

Hotels have horrible inventory management. They don't have the revenue management tools that airlines have. I believe there are whole call centers of 1000s of people at expedia who call hotels to verify room availability and rebook customers.

Another example is Marriot will commonly let the local management control inventory. They commonly use the cheapest room to book to max capacity and upgrade people until they are fully booked. It almost never makes sense to book a more expensive room unless you are booking within 30 days.