Hotel Revenue & Distribution Management Glossary of Industry Jargon & Definitions
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"Anyone to Anyone"
A term used in e-commerce.
Unique identifying code that is used to securely book a predefined rate. These codes are determined by the individual company advertising the special rate.
A three-letter identifier designating a specific airport. Hotels are often referenced to airport codes in the GDS.
A rule-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.
Average Booking Value Per Available Room.
Calculated by ADR minus your CPOR and multiply it by the number of rooms occupied.
Figure derived by dividing actual accommodation revenue (daily/monthly/weekly/annual/defined period of time) by the total number of rooms sold. Also see RevPAR.
Adjusted Revenue Per Occupied Room
Figure derived by dividing actual accommodation revenue for a single day into the total number of rooms sold. Also see RevPAR.
Average Length of Stay
Figure derived by adding the total number of nights and dividing by the number of bookings.
Average Lead Time; The average days between booking/reservation date and arrival date. This is most commonly measured and monitored at house/hotel level. It is also useful in analysing ALT per product, per room type, and by channel for optimization.
Available Passenger Cruise Days
The Cruise Industry’s measurement of capacity and represent double occupancy per cabin multiplied by the number of cruise days for the period.
Available Seat Miles (ASM): Represents the total number of seats flown by an airline multiplied by the distance of each flight.
A global distribution system owned by Japan Airlines and Sabre Inc. to serve primarily Japanese travel agents and Japan Airlines tickets offices. Hotel reservations are booked using the Sabre Hotels database.
"Business to Business"
A term used in e-commerce. Describes business to business transactions.
A term used in e-commerce. Describes business to consumer transactions.
Best Available Rate
The lowest (cheapest) unqualified, publicly available room rate for a given day. Also referred to as the “daily rate” or “rate of the day”. This rate may also serve as the base rate, on which negotiated discounts will be based (and therefore change dynamically as well) and is room-only. BAR flexes with demand and is distributed to all public channels.
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. A pace calculation is a key component of a forecast.
Best Unrestricted Rate
For example: utilized on Accorhotels.com
The blend of different market segments that occupy a hotel, measured as a value or percent of occupancy.
Space that is reserved with a travel provider usually by a tour operator, consortia or wholesaler with the goal of reselling the space. The unsold space is usually returned to the travel provider within a specific period before arrival.
The behind-the-scenes system that provides reservations functionality on an Internet site. This functionality may be provided by a GDS or other reservation software provider such as a switch company. Some GDS examples include: Sabre is the booking engine for Travelocity.com; Worldspan is the booking engine for Priceline.com; Amadeus is the booking engine for onetravel.com; and Galileo is the booking engine for Cheaptickets.com.
Centralised commission payments to travel agents worldwide, in local currency.
Central Reservations Office
Operated by hotel companies to process toll-free telephone reservations and electronic reservations as well as to perform other marketing and service functions.
Central Reservations System / Services.
Originally, the term used for a Global Distribution System. Now used in the hotel industry to refer to a hotel company’s central reservation system or its central services department which typically operates from a single platform performing multiple functions across multiple hotels/properties.
The two letter code used in the GDSs to identify hotel chains. HEDNA administers the list of available chain codes. For example:
Accor Hotels: RT
Hilton Hotels: HH
Marriott Hotels, Resorts and Suites: MC
Renaissance Hotels and Resorts: BR
Courtyard by Marriott: CY
Radisson Hotels: RD
Channel Manager
Software utilised in the planning and distribution of room availability and room rates across multiple channels of sale. To ensure maximum potential exposure and to avoid overbookings, a property’s accommodation inventory needs to be continually updated across all of the distribution channels they may use including direct online bookings, travel wholesalers, contact centres, and OTAs to name a few.
Closed to Arrival
A room inventory control function. Indicates that a reservation for arrival on this date can not be confirmed. A common application of this control is placed on New Year's Day to prevent new reservations with an arrival date of January 1, in order to allow operational flexibility to optimize late departures.
Cost Per Occupied Room
The payment which a travel agent receives from a supplier for selling transportation, accommodations, or other services.
An alphabetic, numeric, or alphanumeric code used to identify and document the reservation of air transportation, hotel or car reservations.
In general, a group of organizations, companies, and/or people forming a grouping to achieve common interests and buying power. While maintaining their individual activities which may in some cases be in direct competition to other consortium members. A consortium is defined as a coalition of incorporated companies formed for marketing and service purposes. While the term is commonly used in the travel industry it is not specific to the travel business. Airline alliances are one well known type of travel consortium. Examples of these are many national and international travel agency consortia such as Flight Centre Management (FCM) and Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT).
Hotels which have preferred status with agencies such as American Express and Carlson Wagonlit travel get access to their consultants, preferred ranking in their systems, and pay significant fees for the privilege – therefore they need to ensure their Sales and Revenue Managers maximize these partners and channels.
Unique identifying code that is used to securely book a pre-negotiated rate. These codes are determined and requested by the individual company, and sometimes unavailable due to duplication within some GDS systems.
Customer Relationship Management
The name given to increasingly sophisticated programs to maintain close, lasting relationships between a company and its customers, between a hotel and its guests.
Closed User Group
A CUG is defined as a specific group of people whom, through their own actions, have enrolled or qualified for membership. Communications are restricted to this group whereby a login and password and/or special access code is required so that the general public cannot view or book the promotional offer. Proof of membership maybe required upon check-in. Offers to CUGs can never be advertised in general publications that have visibility outside of the CUG.
Days Before Arrival
Demand-Based Pricing
In the Hospitality Industry, prices for services do not have to be permanently set. They can be adjusted, depending upon how many rooms, meals, etc. are needed by customers at any a particular time. This is what Demand-Based Pricing is all about – the price of something changes depending upon how much demand there is at a given time.
A demand forecast can exceed 100% occupancy.
A specified amount or percentage of the total bill due to a hotel on a specified date prior to arrival or a certain number of days prior to arrival.
The term which refers to the (historical) practice of discounting hotel rooms or airline seats at the last minute to ensure that the property or aeroplane will fill to capacity on a given night/flight.
Hotel room with a double bed that may be occupied by one or two people.
Online reservations booking process including demand-based hotel rooms pricing and flights and other non-hotel package components such as car hire, tours, etcetera. It is the term used to describe the ability for consumers to create their own packages by choosing the components of the package as they shop, where the individual component prices are not shown to the consumer.
Also known as “fluid pricing”, Market-driven, demand-based pricing, dynamic because rates change with forecasted demand rather than being static. Automated pricing strategy whereby prices are derived from a Base Rate and altered based on strategic configured settings. Dynamically based prices are distributed through a CM from a PMS.
Electronic Data Marketing
Email marketing occurs when a company uses e-mail to promote the sale of their products or services or to build customer relations with past guests/customers.
Europe, the Middle East and Asia
The secured connection of two or more Intranets, generally between companies. Extranets are often used by online agencies to allow hotels to maintain their rates and availability.
Familiarisation Tour (or Famil)
A free or reduced-rate or free-of-charge travel program for travel agents, contact center sales agents and/or airline employees that is designed to acquaint them with specific hotels or destinations to stimulate their sale.
Rates that a property uses to provide a series of options to guests. The rate is determined by which fences a guest accepts, which might include nonrefundable and non-cancelable reservations, advanced purchase reservations, and staying over a weekend.
Using restrictions (minimum length of stay, pre-payment requirements, etc) to filter out reservations on dates and/or room types which have excess demand.
Acronym for a segment of travellers labelled as “Free Independent Travellers” or also “Foreign Individual Traveler”
The practice of selling rooms at a negotiated/confidential/contracted rate with no set allotment or number of rooms, until such time as the rate code is closed. Freesale basis is an excellent option to sell negotiated (discounted) rates in a “yieldable” fashion, as the contract rate may be opened and closed based on forecasted demand. Rooms sold under freesale basis still comply with all rate conditions and applicable contract terms. Utilize an “elastic” group block code in Opera PMS.
