Hotel Tech & Revenue Glossary

RevPAR (Revenue Per Available Room) is the most-quoted hotel performance metric. It equals total room revenue divided by total available rooms, or equivalently ADR multiplied by occupancy rate. It captures both pricing and demand in a single number.

ADR (Average Daily Rate) is the average price actually paid per occupied room over a given period. It equals total room revenue divided by the number of rooms sold (not available).

Occupancy rate is the percentage of available rooms that were actually sold over a given period. It equals rooms sold divided by rooms available, multiplied by 100.

GOPPAR (Gross Operating Profit Per Available Room) measures profitability per room before financing, depreciation, taxes, and capex. It equals gross operating profit divided by available rooms.

ALOS (Average Length of Stay) is the average number of nights a guest stays per booking. It equals total room nights sold divided by total number of bookings (arrivals).

RevPAC (Revenue Per Available Customer) measures total revenue per available guest rather than per available room. It equals total revenue divided by the count of available guests across the period.

RGI (Revenue Generation Index), also called RevPAR Index, compares your hotel's RevPAR to your competitive set's RevPAR. An RGI above 100 means you outperform the comp set; below 100 means you underperform.

Booking pace is the rate at which reservations are being made for a future date, compared to the same point before arrival in a previous reference period (last year, last month, or a rolling average).

TRevPAR (Total Revenue Per Available Room) measures every euro a hotel earns — rooms, F&B, spa, parking, ancillary services — divided by available rooms. It captures the full revenue picture that RevPAR misses.

NPS (Net Promoter Score) measures the percentage of promoters (guests rating 9-10) minus the percentage of detractors (0-6) from a single survey question: would you recommend this hotel? The score ranges from -100 to +100.

CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) measures guest satisfaction with a specific touchpoint or the overall stay, usually as the percentage of guests rating 4 or 5 on a 5-point scale. It is a direct satisfaction measure, complementary to NPS.

Yield management is the practice of adjusting room rates, length-of-stay restrictions, and channel availability based on real-time demand signals, with the goal of maximising revenue per available room rather than maximising occupancy or rate in isolation.

Hotel dynamic pricing adjusts published room rates in real time based on demand signals — current occupancy, forward pace, competitor rates, day of week, weather, local events. The aim is to charge what the market will pay rather than a fixed published rate.

Hotel pickup is the number of new reservations recorded in a recent period (typically the last 7 days) for a specific future arrival date. Pickup reports let a revenue manager see whether demand is building, stalling, or falling for upcoming dates.

A competitive set (comp set) is the small group of hotels that a property uses for benchmarking performance — typically 4-6 hotels in the same market, segment, and price tier. The comp set defines the denominator of RGI and other competitive metrics.

An ALOS extender is any tactic that lengthens an individual guest's stay after the booking is confirmed — late checkout, paid early check-in, an add-on night offer mid-stay, or a length-of-stay upgrade. ALOS extenders lift revenue per booking without changing acquisition cost.

Hotel guest segmentation is the practice of grouping guests into categories based on booking behaviour, channel, lead time, length of stay, and value — then pricing and marketing to each segment differently. Common segments: corporate, group, leisure, last-minute mobile, loyalty member.

Hotel rate plans are pricing structures applied to the same physical room — Best Available Rate (BAR) as the flexible baseline, Non-Refundable Rate (NRR) typically 10-15% below BAR with prepayment, Advance Purchase 15-25% below BAR for early bookings, and Package rates that bundle room with breakfast, spa, or activities.

Hotel stay purpose categorises guest trips by reason: leisure (vacation, weekend, holiday), business (corporate travel, meetings, events), bleisure (combined business + leisure), and other (medical, education, relocation). Different purposes drive different ADR, ALOS, F&B spend, channel mix, and seasonality.

Hotel booking lead time is the number of days between when a reservation is made and the arrival date. Average lead time varies by segment: business 0-7 days, leisure 30-90 days, corporate groups 60-180 days, wedding groups 6-12 months.

A QR code menu is a printed or in-room QR that a guest scans to open a digital menu in their phone browser. Unlike a static PDF, a modern QR menu lets guests order, customise, and pay in the same flow — without downloading any app.

A digital concierge is a software layer that answers guest questions, takes service requests, books transfers and activities, and routes urgent issues to staff — all without requiring an app download or a person at the front desk.

Contactless check-in is the end-to-end process of registering a guest, capturing required ID, assigning a room, and unlocking the door — without a guest standing at the front desk.

A hotel guest portal is a web-based application — usually opened via a QR code in the room — that gives a guest one place to order, request, chat, pay, unlock the door, and access the hotel guide. Unlike a native hotel app, it requires no install.

Online check-in is the process of completing the hotel registration form — guest details, ID, signature, address, GDPR consent — before the guest arrives at the property. The data is captured via a tokenised link, usually sent by email or SMS a few days before arrival.

An AI concierge is a hotel-specific chatbot powered by large language models that answers guest questions about the property, the room, the area, and the booking. Unlike a generic chatbot, it has access to the hotel's actual data (menu, hours, room amenities, local recommendations).

Hotel guest sentiment analysis uses natural language processing to detect emotion in guest messages — chat, review submissions, survey responses — and flag negative sentiment to staff in real time. It catches dissatisfaction while there is still time to recover the guest.

Hotel ID document OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is software that auto-extracts name, document number, date of birth, and other fields from a photo of a passport, driver's licence, or national ID. It removes the typing step from online check-in.

Digital tipping is a mobile-first system that lets a hotel guest send a gratuity to housekeeping, bell staff, or other employees via a QR code or in-portal flow. The tip is routed directly to the staff member (often via the hotel's payroll or a third-party processor) and tracked for tax compliance.

WhatsApp for hotels uses the WhatsApp Business API to send and receive messages between hotel staff and guests on WhatsApp. It covers pre-arrival messaging, in-stay support, post-stay follow-up, and marketing — all on the channel most international guests already use daily.

A mobile key (or digital key) is a credential that allows a hotel guest to unlock their assigned room from a smartphone — usually via Bluetooth Low Energy, NFC, or a one-time PIN delivered through a web portal. It replaces a physical keycard.

A hotel self-service kiosk is a freestanding terminal in the lobby that allows guests to check in, capture ID, take payment, and print a keycard without staff intervention. It is the airport-style check-in for hotels.

A Guest 360 profile is a unified record that aggregates every interaction with a single guest across stays, channels, and touchpoints — bookings, room preferences, F&B history, communication history, requests, complaints, NPS scores. The 360 implies the hotel sees the complete relationship in one view.

A hotel loyalty program is a structured set of benefits — discount rates, room upgrades, free nights, F&B credits — offered to repeat guests who book direct, in exchange for membership enrolment and loyalty to your property over OTAs and competitors.

Hotel review management is the operational practice of monitoring, responding to, and learning from guest reviews across Booking.com, Google, TripAdvisor, Expedia, and other platforms. Done well, it lifts review scores, recovers dissatisfied guests, and produces insights for operational improvement.

A Kitchen Display System (KDS) is a touch-optimised kitchen-side screen that replaces printed order tickets. Orders flow in from the POS, room-service portal, or third-party channels and move across columns (Pending → Preparing → Ready) as cooks bump them.

Hotel housekeeping software is a tool used by housekeepers, supervisors, and reception to track room status (clean, dirty, cleaning, out of service) in real time. It replaces paper checklists and walkie-talkie status calls.

Hotel workforce management software covers staff scheduling, shift templates, leave management, time tracking, and labour cost reporting. It is the operational tool for managing the largest cost line in a hotel.

A hotel folio is the running record of all charges (room, F&B, services, taxes) associated with a guest's stay. It is the document used at checkout to settle the bill. In a modern PMS, the folio is a database record exposed in the guest portal.

A hotel CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is software that stores guest profiles, preferences, communication history, and stay records across multiple visits. Unlike a PMS — which is reservation- and operations-focused — a CRM is guest-focused and persists data across stays.

A master folio aggregates charges across multiple rooms or guests for billing to a single payer (a company, group organiser, or event sponsor). A sub-folio splits charges per individual guest within a room or stay. Both extend the basic folio concept for more complex billing scenarios.

A hotel rebrand is a deliberate change of the property's market identity — name, visual identity, positioning, sometimes segment. A soft rebrand changes name, logo, and marketing while the physical product stays roughly the same. A hard rebrand combines name/identity change with renovation, segment shift, or service-model overhaul.

A channel manager is software that synchronises room rates, availability, and bookings across multiple online distribution channels (Booking.com, Expedia, Airbnb, Hotels.com, the hotel's own website) from a single dashboard.

A PMS (Property Management System) is the central software a hotel uses to manage reservations, guest profiles, check-in and check-out, room status, billing, and reporting. It is the operational backbone of the property.

An OTA (Online Travel Agency) is a third-party platform that sells hotel rooms in exchange for a commission. Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, Airbnb, and Agoda are the largest. Commission ranges from 15% to 25% on most properties.

A direct booking is a reservation made through the hotel's own channels — website booking engine, phone, email, walk-in — rather than through an OTA or other third-party. Direct bookings carry zero commission and create a direct guest relationship.

Rate parity is a contractual clause that requires a hotel to publish the same (or higher) rate on its own website as it does on the OTA it has the parity contract with. It prevents undercutting the OTA on rate, though usually not on value-adds.

A group booking (or room block) is a reservation that holds multiple rooms for a single client — a wedding, conference, sports team, corporate event. The hotel typically holds the block at a discounted rate until a release date, after which unbooked rooms return to general inventory.

A walk-in guest is someone who arrives at the hotel without a reservation and requests a room. The hotel chooses whether to accept based on availability and chooses the rate based on demand, inventory, and competitor pricing at that moment.

Hotel metasearch is a category of online services (Google Hotel Ads, Trivago, Kayak, Tripadvisor) that show a hotel's rates from multiple distribution channels — direct site, OTAs, wholesale — side by side on one page. Hotels pay per click, not per booking.

Hotel wholesale distribution sells rooms in bulk to bedbanks (Hotelbeds, GTA, Bonotel), tour operators (TUI, FTI, Jet2), and DMCs (Destination Management Companies) at discounted rates. The wholesaler then resells the inventory to retail OTAs, travel agents, and packaged tours.

Hotel upselling is the practice of offering a higher-value option or add-on to a guest who has already booked. Examples: a room upgrade, late checkout, breakfast add-on, airport transfer, spa package, or an extra bottle of wine added to a room-service order.

A hotel no-show is a confirmed reservation where the guest fails to arrive without cancelling. The room sits empty, the revenue is lost (unless prepaid), and the impact on the bottom line is direct.

Late checkout is the practice of allowing a guest to vacate the room later than the published checkout time, usually for a fee. Standard checkout is 11:00-12:00; late checkout typically extends to 14:00-16:00.

Early check-in is the practice of allowing a guest to access their room before the published check-in time, usually for a fee. Standard check-in is 14:00-16:00; early check-in typically opens 09:00-12:00.

KSeF (Krajowy System e-Faktur, National e-Invoicing System) is Poland's mandatory electronic invoicing platform for B2B transactions. As of 2025-2026, hotels operating in Poland must send and receive all B2B invoices through KSeF in structured XML format.

A hotel stay extension is the practice of selling a guest one or more additional nights after they've already checked in. Conversion is typically 5-15% on offers placed mid-stay, dramatically higher than the 1-3% conversion of marketing to new prospects.

Hotel asset management is the discipline of overseeing a hotel as a financial asset — distinct from day-to-day operational management. Asset managers represent owner interests, focus on long-term value creation, monitor operating metrics against budget, and drive capital decisions.