Reference

Glossary of commercial terms

The vocabulary used across our reports, diagnostics and engagement documents — defined as we actually use them, with the formulas where a formula exists and the common misreadings where they matter.

Defined terms34

Practice areas7

With formulas7

34 terms

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A

ADR Average Daily Rate Revenue: Total rooms revenue divided by rooms sold, over a defined period. ADR measures realised rate on occupied rooms only and says nothing about how much inventory went unsold, which is why it should never be read without occupancy or RevPAR alongside it.
ADR = Rooms Revenue ÷ Rooms Sold
Allotment Distribution: A block of inventory contractually made available to a third party — a wholesaler, tour operator or bed bank — usually at a fixed net rate. Allotments signed before metasearch became universal are the most common origin of rate parity breaches, because a static net rate can be repackaged and surfaced publicly below the property's own rate.
Attribution window Analytics: The period after an ad interaction during which a conversion is credited to that interaction. Because platforms set their own windows and each reports independently, summing conversions across platforms double-counts any booking that touched more than one. Deduplication with a shared event identifier is the only reliable remedy.

B

BAR Best Available Rate Revenue: The lowest unrestricted, publicly available rate a property offers for a given date and room type. BAR is the reference point against which parity is assessed: any publicly visible rate below BAR for equivalent inclusions constitutes a breach.
Bed bank Distribution: A business-to-business intermediary that contracts inventory in bulk at net rates and redistributes it through downstream resellers via API. Bed banks are a legitimate channel for reaching tour operators and offline agents, but they are the principal mechanism by which net rates become publicly visible on metasearch.

C

CAC Customer Acquisition Cost Marketing: Total acquisition expenditure divided by customers acquired in the same period. In hospitality, CAC should be calculated on property-management-system arrivals rather than booking-engine confirmations, since cancellations and no-shows are not customers.
CAC = Total Acquisition Spend ÷ Arrivals Acquired
Channel manager Distribution: Software that synchronises rates, availability and restrictions between a property management system and its connected sales channels. A correctly configured channel manager makes parity enforceable; a poorly mapped one makes parity breaches inevitable and invisible.
Compression date Revenue: A date on which market-wide demand materially exceeds market-wide supply, typically driven by a convention, sporting fixture or festival. Compression dates cannot be identified from historical property data alone because the driving event may not recur — they must be sourced from a forward event calendar.
Compset Competitive Set Revenue: The defined group of properties against which performance is benchmarked. A compset should be selected on rate comparability and demand substitutability rather than on physical proximity or star rating alone.
Conversions API CAPI Analytics: A server-side interface for sending conversion events directly from a business system to an advertising platform, rather than relying on a browser tag. Server-side transmission survives browser tracking restrictions and, critically, allows a shared event identifier to be passed for cross-platform deduplication.
CRS Central Reservation System Systems: The system of record for rates, availability and reservations across all channels for a property or group. In multi-property operations the CRS, rather than the PMS, is usually the authoritative source for distribution configuration.

D

Direct share Distribution: The proportion of room nights booked through channels the property controls — its own website, booking engine, telephone and walk-in. Direct share is the single most useful summary indicator of distribution health, though the target is a deliberate mix rather than a maximum.
Direct Share = Direct Room Nights ÷ Total Room Nights

E

Elasticity Price Elasticity of Demand Revenue: The responsiveness of demand to a change in price. Many seasonal troughs are not price-elastic at all — demand is absent for reasons unrelated to rate — and discounting into an inelastic window forfeits rate without gaining occupancy.

F

FIT Free Independent Traveller Segments: An individual leisure traveller booking independently rather than as part of a group or package. FIT rates are frequently the vehicle through which wholesale inventory is repackaged and surfaced publicly below BAR.

G

Genius Distribution: Booking.com's guest loyalty programme, in which participating properties fund an additional discount to enrolled members. Commission is calculated on the discounted rate, so a 20% commission with a 10% Genius discount costs approximately 28% of the gross rate. Blanket enrolment without date-fencing is among the most common unexamined margin concessions in the independent segment.
GOPPAR Gross Operating Profit per Available Room Revenue: Gross operating profit divided by available room nights. GOPPAR is a better measure of commercial performance than RevPAR because it accounts for the cost of the revenue — including distribution cost, which RevPAR ignores entirely.
GOPPAR = Gross Operating Profit ÷ Available Room Nights

L

LCP Largest Contentful Paint Conversion: The time from navigation start until the largest visible element renders. In a multi-step booking funnel LCP applies at each step, so a 3.8 second LCP across a six-step journey imposes more than twenty seconds of cumulative waiting before a commitment has been made.
LNR Local Negotiated Rate Segments: A rate contracted directly with a corporate account, usually annually, and loaded into that account's travel booking tool. LNR rates are typically tiered by expected annual room-night production and fenced by last-room-availability rules.

M

Metasearch Distribution: A price comparison layer — Google Hotel Ads, Trivago, Kayak — that aggregates rates from marketplaces, wholesalers and the property's own channel. Metasearch is where parity breaches become visible to guests, and where a property connected to its own price feed can compete on equal footing.
MICE Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions Segments: Group business built around events rather than individual travel. MICE demand is typically contracted well in advance and can fill periods that transient demand does not reach, which makes it valuable to weekday- or season-weighted assets.

N

No-show Analytics: A booking that was confirmed and never arrived. No-shows inflate platform-reported conversions because the conversion tag fires at booking and is never reversed. Monthly reconciliation against property management system arrivals is the only reliable way to remove them.

O

Occupancy Revenue: Rooms sold as a proportion of rooms available over a defined period. Occupancy read alone is misleading, since it can be purchased with rate; it should always be read against ADR, and preferably reduced to RevPAR.
Occupancy = Rooms Sold ÷ Rooms Available
OTA Online Travel Agency Distribution: A marketplace that sells accommodation on a commission or merchant basis. OTAs provide genuine reach into unfamiliar feeder markets; the commercial question is not whether to use them but what proportion of demand should be intermediated deliberately rather than by default.

P

Pace Booking Pace Revenue: The rate at which reservations accumulate for a future date, compared against the same point in the booking curve for a comparable prior period. Pace is a forward indicator; same-time-last-year variance is a backward one, which is why forecasts built only on the latter carry high error.
Parity Rate Parity Distribution: The condition in which a property's rate for a given date, room type and inclusion set is consistent across all publicly visible channels. Parity is not a policy — it is an enforcement outcome that requires continuous rate shopping, an evidenced breach register and a defined escalation path.
PMS Property Management System Systems: The operational system of record for reservations, arrivals, folios and guest profiles. The PMS arrival record is the authoritative measure of a booking, and every marketing performance figure should reconcile to it.

R

RevPAR Revenue per Available Room Revenue: Rooms revenue divided by available room nights, or equivalently occupancy multiplied by ADR. RevPAR combines rate and volume into a single figure and is the standard comparative measure — though it says nothing about the cost of achieving it.
RevPAR = Occupancy × ADR
ROAS Return on Ad Spend Marketing: Revenue attributed to advertising divided by advertising expenditure. ROAS is only meaningful when the revenue figure reconciles to money actually received; calculated on booking-engine confirmations it typically overstates by 25-45%.
ROAS = Attributed Revenue ÷ Ad Spend

S

Shoulder season Revenue: The periods between peak and trough demand. Shoulder seasons are usually the most improvable part of a seasonal calendar because demand exists but is under-served, unlike deep troughs where demand may be absent at any price.
STLY Same Time Last Year Revenue: A comparison of current performance against the equivalent point in the prior year. STLY is useful context and a poor forecasting basis on its own, since it cannot anticipate events that have not previously occurred.
Substitution rate Demand Substitution Distribution: The proportion of intermediated bookings preceded by branded search or direct site visit — that is, guests who had already selected the property and were intercepted en route. Substitution rates of 25-35% are common and represent commission paid on demand the property generated itself.

T

TMC Travel Management Company Segments: An agency managing travel programmes on behalf of corporate clients. Properties not loaded into TMC systems are effectively invisible to contracted corporate demand, regardless of rate or product quality.

W

Wholesaler Distribution: An intermediary contracting inventory at net rates for redistribution, historically to offline tour operators. The structural problem is that a static net rate agreed for packaged sale can be resold as a standalone room-only rate on metasearch, undercutting the property's own published rate.

Y

Yield management Revenue: The discipline of selling the right inventory to the right guest at the right time and price. In practice it means demand-responsive pricing, restriction controls and channel allocation operated on a defined cadence with a documented decision log — not a periodic rate review.

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Knowing the terms is not the same as knowing your numbers

The Revenue Score™ diagnostic calculates these measures against your own property data and returns a ranked list of where the deficits actually sit.

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