How do I learn to read demand and time hotel pricing?

You have already learned the mechanics of managing rates, which is no small thing. Reading demand and timing your pricing is the harder art on top of the craft, and it eludes you now for a simple reason: it comes from pattern, and you have not yet seen enough patterns. That comes with time and attention, not talent you either have or lack. Demand leaves footprints before it arrives, in your booking pace, in the calendar, in what the market around you is doing. Start keeping a simple record: what you priced, what happened, and what you would do differently. Compare your guesses to reality every week. The people who read demand well are not gifted seers; they are just students who kept score long enough to recognize the shapes. Pick one upcoming period and make a real prediction now, in writing, about how demand will move and when to adjust. Then watch it play out. Whether you are right or wrong, you learn. Do that repeatedly and timing stops feeling like a mystery and starts feeling like a memory. The instinct you are waiting for is just experience you have not gathered yet.