Hotel revenue management glossary

The average price achieved per room sold, calculated as room revenue divided by rooms sold.

Your ADR divided by your competitive set's, showing whether you achieve more or less than the market's average rate.

The lowest unrestricted, publicly bookable rate for a room type on a date, with no advance purchase, minimum stay or membership condition.

The software that takes a reservation on your own website, checking availability, collecting payment and writing the booking into your PMS.

The speed at which reservations are accumulating for a future date, measured against the same date at the same point in a comparable prior period.

The gap between the moment a reservation is made and the date the guest arrives, described across your bookings rather than one of them.

The share of reservations cancelled before arrival, used to work out how much of what is on the books will actually turn up.

The software that pushes your rates and availability to every channel you sell through, and pulls the resulting reservations back.

A restriction preventing a guest from beginning a stay on a given date, while guests who arrived earlier may stay through it.

The small group of properties you genuinely compete with for the same guest, used as the benchmark for pricing and performance.

A date on which demand across the whole market exceeds the rooms available in it, so displaced travellers pay more than they normally would.

Predicting how many rooms will sell on a future date, and at what rate, early enough to change a decision rather than explain a result.

A reservation made with the property itself, through your own website, phone, email or front desk, with no intermediary taking a commission.

The calculation that decides whether a block of discounted business is worth taking, by comparing it against the higher-rated business it pushes out.

The share of your room nights coming from each booking channel, and what each of those channels costs you to sell through.

Letting your room rates move in response to how demand is actually developing for each date, rather than setting them in advance and holding them.

How close your forecasts came to what actually happened, measured against the predictions you wrote down rather than the ones you remember making.

Gross operating profit divided by the number of rooms available, whether or not they sold.

The minimum worth accepting for your final available room on a date, set by what that room could earn from the best alternative booking.

The number of consecutive nights a guest occupies a room on one reservation, averaged across bookings as average length of stay.

Your occupancy divided by your competitive set's, showing whether you win more or less than your fair share of the rooms being sold nearby.

Grouping your business by the nature of the demand behind it, meaning who the guest is and why they are travelling, rather than by which channel they booked on.

A comparison site showing what the same room costs across several sources at once, then sending the traveller onward to book.

A restriction requiring a reservation to cover at least a set number of consecutive nights before it can include a given date.

A future date forecast to finish below where you want it, identified early enough that you can still do something about it.

The average rate you actually keep per room sold, after the commissions and distribution costs of the channel that delivered the booking.

The share of confirmed reservations where the guest never arrives and never cancelled, leaving a room held for somebody who was never coming.

The percentage of available rooms sold in a given period, calculated as rooms sold divided by rooms available.

The number of rooms currently reserved for a future date, counted as the reservations stand today.

A third-party website that lists your rooms, takes bookings from travellers and charges you a commission on each one.

Deliberately accepting more reservations than you have rooms, expecting cancellations and no-shows to bring arrivals back within capacity.

The number of rooms booked for a future date over a defined recent window, usually the last seven days.

How much demand for your rooms changes when you change the rate, which at a hotel belongs to the date rather than to the property.

The software holding the record of your business: reservations, room assignments, rates, guest profiles, folios and the nightly audit.

Offering the same room at the same rate and conditions across every distribution channel.

Checking what your competitors are charging for future dates, so you can see your own price in context before you set it.

The discipline of deciding what to sell, to whom, through which channel and at what price, so a fixed and perishable set of rooms earns what demand allows.

Software that reads demand signals for your future dates and produces a rate for each one, so pricing responds to how the property is actually selling.

Room revenue divided by the total number of rooms available, whether or not they sold.

Your property's RevPAR divided by your competitive set's, showing whether you are capturing more or less than your fair share of market revenue.

The recurring annual pattern in demand for your property, and the rate seasons most independents draw from it.

The transitional period between your peak and your low, when demand is moderate and the outcome genuinely depends on what you do.

An instruction closing a date, room type or rate plan to all new bookings, whatever the stay pattern.

A benchmarking report comparing your occupancy, ADR and RevPAR against an anonymised competitive set.

The split between rooms sold to individuals booking on their own account and blocks contracted together at a negotiated rate for a single organiser.

All revenue from every department divided by the number of rooms available, whether or not they sold.

Relocating a guest with a confirmed reservation to another property because you cannot accommodate them, at your cost.

Maximising revenue from a fixed, perishable set of rooms by controlling both the price of each one and whether it is available to a given booking.