Hotel Revenue Management Glossary

The owner-side professional who oversees a hotel's financial performance and capital decisions on behalf of the owner.

Where a GM runs the property and a revenue manager runs the rate, an asset manager protects the equity. They benchmark RevPAR and GOPPAR against the comp set, push ROI on capex, and decide when to renovate, refinance, or sell. Most independent hotels don't have one. Most institutional portfolios do.

Calculating whether accepting a group, contract, or wholesale rate would displace higher-paying transient business.

Displacement is the mental math behind every group decision. If a group at $99 pushes out 30 transient rooms that would have sold at $189, you've displaced $90 × 30 = $2,700 in revenue. Always include ancillary spend, future-stay value, and shoulder-night fill before deciding. Most groups look better than they pencil.

A leisure traveler booking individually rather than as part of a group or tour, typically at retail or wholesale rates.

FIT is the mainstream transient leisure segment - the highest-yielding, most-targeted business for resorts, urban boutiques, and destination hotels. They book early, stay longer, and spend on F&B and amenities. Watch FIT pace closely; a softening here is a softening of the leisure market, not just your hotel.

The number of occupied rooms in the hotel right now, used for daily operations and same-day forecasting.

Front desk, housekeeping, and F&B all start their day with the house count. It tells the executive chef how many breakfasts to prep, the housekeeping manager how many checkouts to schedule, and the GM whether to walk anyone tonight. A live house count tied to the PMS prevents the most expensive operational mistakes.

The total number of rooms available to sell on a given night, by room type and channel.

Inventory is the raw material of revenue management. Out-of-order rooms, OTA allocations, group blocks, and unsold inventory all count differently. The most expensive mistake is closing inventory by room type when you should be closing by channel - losing direct bookings because you blocked OTA inventory.

A guest with a confirmed reservation who fails to arrive and is typically charged the first night's rate.

No-shows hurt twice: you lose the spend opportunity and you might have walked someone earlier. Track no-show rate by segment - group and OTA bookings have higher rates than direct. Modern overbooking models build expected no-shows into capacity planning, recovering 1-3% RevPAR most operators leave on the table.

A reservation status indicating the booking is held but no specific room type or rate is guaranteed.

NRG bookings are mostly seen in waitlist and standby contexts - corporate accounts, last-minute group adds, distressed inventory swaps. They give the front desk flexibility but require careful tracking, since they don't show in standard occupancy projections. Useful tool, easy to forget.

The hotel professional responsible for setting rates, forecasting demand, and maximizing room revenue.

A revenue manager owns the rate calendar, the pace report, the comp-set strategy, and the channel mix. They sit between sales (who want the group) and the GM (who wants the occupancy) - and balance both against owner expectations on RevPAR and GOPPAR. The best ones blend math, judgment, and operator instinct.

The portion of operating cost that changes with each occupied room - housekeeping, amenities, F&B subsidy, utilities.

Variable cost is the difference between gross room revenue and contribution margin. A common rule of thumb: $30-50 per occupied room at limited-service properties, $80-150 at full-service and resort. Knowing your true variable cost is the only way to know if a discount rate adds margin or erodes it.

Sending an arriving guest to another hotel because the property is overbooked, with the original hotel covering costs and rebooking.

Walking happens when overbooking outpaces no-shows. Done well, it's a controlled outcome of a yield-maximizing overbooking model. Done badly, it's a service disaster that costs you future bookings, OTA review penalties, and chargebacks. Always walk strategically: lowest-spend, lowest-loyalty guest first, with a hand-off and follow-up call.