Hotel Revenue Management Terminology

A rules-based process used to create optimal revenue management segmentation from reservation data to support both the best basis for forecast and optimization and key organizational reporting and business intelligence requirements.

Revenue sources other than room and conference & banquet revenue. Examples include parking, spa, golf, entertainment, etc. Ancillary revenue streams can be configured for group and transient market segments

The science of training machines to perform human tasks.

Total number of unique attendees/optimal capacity of venue.

Actual daily room revenue/total rooms sold.

An index that measures a hotel’s rate against its market. Above 100 indicates a hotel’s rates on average are higher than its competitors.

The lowest non-restricted rate bookable by all guests. This rate can change several times a week and up to several times a day.

Visualization of the speed at which bookings materialize prior to the arrival date.

The system that allows reservations to be made on a website.

The speed at which bookings materialize over a period of time from the booking date to the arrival date. Booking pace is expressed as a fraction of bookings received on certain days in advance.

The timeframe in which a reservation is made by the guests or a group and the actual arrival date.

The blend of different market segments that occupy a hotel, measured as a value or percent of occupancy.

A reservation system used to maintain hotel information, rates, and inventory status. Processes and manages reservations for one or multiple hotels.

Provides a way for hotels to control the allocation of inventory and rates across all distribution channels including OTAs, wholesalers and GDS.

Comparable hotels in a hotel’s vicinity that compete for guests.

A combination of physical guest rooms that can be converted into various configurations to form larger and more tailored accommodations for guests.

The number of rooms that could be sold considering the hotel’s capacity or restrictions on bookings.

The cost of turning away a guest when the hotel is unable to provide the promised accommodation, which may include the cost of a hotel room, transportation, meal and probable lost future business.

A system used by companies for customer management and sales management to improve business relationships.

The contracted date when the hotel closes a group block and releases unsold rooms to inventory.

Practice of dividing the day into several parts, in which a different meeting or event can be accommodated in a function space (morning, lunch, afternoon, evening, etc.).

The number of days prior to an arrival date. Used to measure information such as a booking pace, hotel performance and forecast performance.

Business anticipated for future days.

Anticipating the amount of consumer demand for a product through the use of predictive analytics.

An analysis of business (primarily group) based on the total value of the business versus the value of the transient business that would be displaced if the business were accepted.

The practice of flexing price for a product based on market demand.

Rates a hotel uses to provide a series of options to guests. The rate is determined by which fences a guest accepts, which might include non-refundable, non-cancelable reservations and advanced purchase reservations.

The statistical patterns used to predict demand, occupancy and revenue.

Function-only business restrictions or event-only business restrictions are guidelines put in place at the hotel to ensure space is available for groups within their typical booking window.

A pattern indicating whether a rate is open (available) for the arrival date and length of stay.

Calculated by multiplying the available area by the number of day parts being evaluated.

Comprehensive travel shopping and reservation platforms travel agents use to book airline, car, hotel and other travel arrangements for their customers.

A key metric measured by taking total revenues minus operating and marketing expenses, divided by number of available rooms.

The group business expected for an occupancy date.

A system tool that allows users to enter details about a potential group booking, generate an analysis, and use the resulting data to select the best arrival date and rate that will provide the highest benefit to the hotel.

The difference between the final occupancy from a group and the maximum value of the block pace or the pickup pace.

A system feature that provides group business data, including occupancy date, blocked rooms and expected wash, and is also the location from which users can override the system-generated group wash.

A quantifiable measure used to evaluate success in meeting objectives. For example: Average Daily Rate (ADR), Revenue per Available Room (RevPAR), Gross Operating Profit Per Available Room (GOPPAR), Occupancy rate, Profits per Available Space Time (ProPAST), Profits per Occupied Space Time (ProPOST) and Function Space Utilization Percentage.

The maximum amount of room revenue a hotel can expect to make from the last room available for sale. The system uses LRV as a restriction control for low value rates during busy periods and opens all rates during slow times.

The number of nights a guest stays at a hotel. This value is also the difference between the departure date and the arrival date.

A subset of artificial intelligence that automates analytical model building. It is grounded in the idea that systems can learn from data, identify patterns and make decisions with minimal human intervention.

Information related to a company’s market, including booking trends, competitor rates and customer reviews.

A portion of the customers who possess a common set of motivations as well as a combination of unique purchasing (e.g., advance purchase vs. walk-in) and usage patterns (e.g., single night vs. weekly).

Market segments grouped together by pattern and rate.

A room inventory control function that limits the number of nights a reservation can stay when arriving on a certain date.

A search tool that aggregates rates and inventory from other websites to produce its own results. Examples include Kayak and TripAdvisor.

Meetings, Incentives, Conference & Exhibitions. An acronym used in sales & catering and function space.

The lowest acceptable amount a group can be charged. Used to calculate the suggested group rate.

A room inventory control function that requires a reservation to meet or exceed a certain length of stay in order to complete the reservation.

The price of a room or space minus commission, transaction costs or before being marked up by third party.

A service offered by IDeaS to new hotels using an IDeaS RMS to begin applying analytics as quickly as possible when the historical data required to build the system is not available.

The case where some customers with a reservation do not show up to use the room(s) reserved for them, without explicit cancellation.

The “fill” measure of a hotel. Occupancy = total number of rooms occupied/total number of rooms available x 100 (e.g., 75% occupancy).

The constrained occupancy the hotel is expected to achieve for a specified period of time. This value may be expressed either as a specific number of rooms or as a percentage of available rooms.

Third-party internet sites consumers can use to book hotel, air, car rental or tour activities. This indirect channel charges a commission or marks up the rate to guests. Examples include Expedia, Booking.com and Ctrip.

A forecast based on the anticipated constrained occupancy for a hotel. Used to manage staffing and supplies.

The use of forecast, inventory, rate, configuration, and user interaction to calculate the best pricing and inventory control decisions that maximizes quality revenues for a hotel. Optimal pricing, LRV, forecasts and overbooking are the end result of the optimization process.

The practice of selling more product than physically present to account for cancellations and no-shows. The goal of overbooking is to maximize revenue by achieving as close to 100% occupancy as possible on any given day.

The use of advanced analytics to make predictions about unknown future events using historic and forward-looking data.

Customer’s willingness to pay. Historical pace data is used to estimate how much a change in pricing impacts demand. Demand is either elastic or inelastic.

Profit per available space time (or meal period).

A system used on property to manage guests and site activities.

Profit per occupied space time (or meal period).

A rate the guest must qualify for. A corporate rate for the guest’s company, a rate available due to an affiliation such as AARP, a promotional package rate with specific booking conditions, etc.

A system used to distribute a hotel’s rates and inventory to direct and indirect channels.

An online service that supplies competitor rate data to hotels.

The system-calculated remaining unconstrained demand for an arrival date in the future, as of the processing date.

A system that manages guest reviews for a business.

Pricing science that integrates a hotel’s online reputation, guest reviews and ratings into its revenue management strategy.

An index that measures a hotel’s revenue share in its market. Above 100 indicates a hotel’s RevPAR on average is higher than competitors. Used to determine if a hotel is capturing their fair share.

The discipline of optimizing availability and price to maximize revenue. Simply put, selling the right product to the right person at the right time on the right channel for the right price.

The system businesses use to control the supply and price of their inventory in order to achieve maximum revenue or profit by managing availability, room types, stay patterns (future and historical), etc.

A business discipline and culture that focuses on balancing supply and demand in a rational and systematic way to maximize revenue and profit while managing risk under current and anticipated market conditions.

Revenue/total number of attendees. Helps venues understand utilization for their space.

Daily room revenue/total rooms available.

Total event revenue/gross occupied square feet (or meters).

The discipline of infusing sophisticated mathematics with industry expertise to transform data into accurate, automated, and actionable revenue-enhancing decisions.

A group of rooms that may be created to organize rooms to aid in planning, sales or other management tasks. Examples include associating rooms with a single fixed price, a single guest, a channel, a group or a single team of staff members that manage or maintain the rooms in the block.

Categories used to group room types with similar values.

Rooms blocked or occupied multiplied by the number of nights each room is reserved or occupied.

A collection of rooms sharing a common element at the hotel. A room type might be a suite or a single room with a double bed, poolside or ocean-side. A room may belong to multiple room types.

Potential revenue from all inquiries/revenue booked.

Nights of less occupancy on either side of peak nights.

STR is a global provider of competitive benchmarking, information services and research to the hotel industry. STR reports provide property performance data compared to its competitive aggregate and general market, allowing you to follow trends in occupancy, ADR, and RevPAR.

A date or set of contiguous dates for which the hotel data cannot be forecasted in the normal fashion, or period(s) where the transient business pattern is different than normal.

A user-selected value that replaces the demand value calculated by the system.

The intelligent calibration of demand across all revenue streams to meet overall business objectives. It is the ability to instantly and systematically decide which business to accept across multiple revenue streams at all times based on greatest overall value to the asset.

Guests who book individually rather than with a group.

The anticipated volume of business from transient market segment groups.

Daily total revenue/total rooms available.

Refers to the number of rooms that could be sold if there were no constraints such as the hotel’s capacity or restrictions on bookings. Unconstrained demand provides a complete picture of all the possible demand, not just the limited demand you accept. Also known as “true demand.”

Rates offered by the hotel to guests who do not have an agreed contract rate and that have no restrictions or booking conditions attached to them.

The difference between the group block and what the hotel expects it will actually pick up.

Set of strategies that help realize optimal revenues for capacity-constrained resources. The core concept of yield management is to provide the right service to the right customer at the right time for the right price by understanding, anticipating and influencing consumer behavior.