GEM – Guest Experience Management. The process of engaging, measuring, analyzing and creating the best guest experience.

ORM – Online Reputation Management. The process of facilitating and managing your brand mentions online. Also referred to as Social Media Monitoring (SMM). We believe this process is critical to your brand’s ability to engage your guests and their experiences, through their online conversations, to the point of creating and encouraging positive word-of-mouth.

UEP – Unique Experience Proposition. The hospitality equivalent of marketing’s Unique Sales Proposition (USP). The idea that your ability to differentiate yourself successfully from your competition is based on the totality of the non-replicatable uniqueness of the experience you offer. In our business, it’s all about the experience, not the sale.

VoE – Voice of the Employee  An Employee experience measurement program that goes beyond the normal Employee feedback model. A VoE program drills deeper into Employee responses and feedback from their experiences with your brand then gives you a measure of your current brand’s ability to attract, retain and engage the best talent for your business. The employee equivalent of VoG below.

VoG – Voice-of-the-Guest.  A Guest experience measurement program that goes beyond the normal guest feedback model. A VoG program drills deeper into guest responses and feedback from their experiences with your brand then gives you a measure of your current brand’s ability to create and sustain real, organic guest loyalty.

WII-FM What’s In It For Me?  Sorry, it’s not a radio station. It’s usually the first questions anyone asks when told that they need to participate in some change effort or behavioral modification. This is where employers should start the conversation about change efforts in order to get buy-in and acceptance of the need to do so in the first place.

Average Daily Rate (ADR) A measure of the average rate paid for rooms sold; calculated by dividing room revenue by rooms sold.

ARI Average Rate Index A metric used to determine whether the property is achieving its fair share of ADR compared to a specific group of hotels (i.e. a competitive set). It is calculated by taking the ADR of the property and dividing it by the ADR of the competitive set (competitive set data collected through a third-party provider such as STR). An ADR of above 1.00 indicates that the property is achieving more than its fair share, while below 1.00 suggests that the hotels in the competitive set are ‘eating’ into the properties’ ‘pie’. Note: Traditionally, hotel DORMs will prefer to multiply the number by 100 (or convert into a percentage).

Best Available Rate (BAR) A commonly used base rate upon which all other priced segments are based. Also the common rate used for comparison between hotels.

Block code A code attached only to group rooms that are a part of a block. Block pricing A non-yieldable rate given to a set number (or block) of rooms held for a particular group.

Booking curve An important tool for yielding that provides a visual representation of the pickup, number of bookings, availability and yielding capacity of the hotel over time.

Booking engine The technology that allows reservations to be made on a website.

Booking window The time-frame in which hotel reservations come into hotels for a particular stay date(s).

Capacity The set number of rooms in a hotel.

Central Reservation System (CRS) A system or an office that is used by hotels in one chain or organization, or created by a third-party vendor, used to maintain hotel information, inventories and rates and to manage the reservation process.

Channel management The techniques and systems used by hotels to update hotel information, room inventory and rates in each of the distribution channels.

Channels Different methods by which a customer books/reserves a room.

Commissions The payments that a travel agent receives for each reservation made on their site.

Competitive set Consists of a group of hotels by which a property can compare itself to the group’s aggregate performance.

Conversion The transition by a customer from shopping or gathering information to taking an action such as purchasing or making an inquiry.

Day(s) Before Arrival (DBA) The number of days before the stay date. Demand The amount of interest in a product.

Denial A notification that the hotel has been shopped on the hotel’s direct booking engine and a rate was not given because the hotel was sold out or a restriction was placed on the shopped date

Dynamic Pricing The process of actively applying revenue management by selling the same products at different prices to different customers.

Fenced rate A rate that involves certain requirements in order to make the reservation, such as nonrefundable and non-cancelable reservations, or advanced purchase reservations. Fenced rates are more easily segmented.

Forecast Expected revenue results based on analysis (occupancy and average rate included).

Global Distribution Systems (GDS) Four large reservation systems (Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre, Worldspan) originally designed for airlines and now widely used by travel agents only to book all forms of travel. GDS systems generally use older technology and are not connected through the Internet.

Gross Operating Profit Per Available Room (GOPPAR) A metric that measures total revenue minus operational and marketing expenses per room.

Group Displacement The process of evaluating a group’s total profitability in comparison to the profitability of accepting business from other channels

Leisure traveler Non-business traveler, or someone traveling for personal reasons and not work.

Length of stay The number of nights a guest has booked at the hotel.

Look-to-book ratio Used in the travel industry to show the percentage of website visitors (lookers) relative to the number who book on the website (bookers).

Metasearch A type of search engine that aggregates inventory from several sources and presents it in a single space.

MPI Market Penetration Index A metric used to determine whether the property is achieving its fair share of occupancy compared to a specific group of hotels (i.e. a competitive set). It is calculated by taking the occupancy percentage of the property and dividing it by the occupancy percentage of the competitive set (competitive set data collected through a third-party provider such as STR). A MPI of above 1.00 indicates that the property is achieving more than its fair share, while below 1.00 suggests that the hotels in the competitive set are ‘eating’ into the properties’ ‘pie’. Note: Traditionally, hotel DORMs will prefer to multiply the number by 100 (or convert into a percentage).

Net rate The sell rate with commission already taken out, sometimes required for OTAs.

Occupancy The percentage of available rooms that were sold during a specified period of time. Occupancy is calculated by dividing the number of rooms sold by rooms available. Occupancy = Rooms Sold / Rooms Available

Online Travel Agency (OTA) An Internet-based hotel and travel reservations system. Hotels typically provide inventory to OTAs, which sell the rooms in exchange for a commission.

Opaque Describes a booking channel where the supplier (hotel) remains hidden until after the purchase is complete.

Open Pricing The ability to price all room types, channels and dates independently of each other to maximize revenue without having to close any off.

Overbooking The practice of confirming reservations beyond capacity, either in expectation of cancellations or no-shows, or in error.

Pace Also called pickup, pace is the rate at which reservations are made for a particular date.

Pay Per Click (PPC) A marketing technique employed when a marketer establishes links or advertising copy on a web page and agrees to pay a fee each time a web user clicks on those links.

Predictive Analytics Extracting information from data and using it to predict trends and behavior patterns.

Price Elasticity An economic measure that shows the responsiveness or “elasticity” of the demand for a product based on a change in its price.

ProPAR Profits per available room, an emerging metric that calculates not revenue, but net revenue. This factors in customer acquisition costs and other expenses. Net RevPAR is another term for this.

Property Management System (PMS) Used on-site in an individual hotel to allow for guest check-in and check-out.

Rate parity The strategy to maintain consistency of rates between sales channels, usually enforced through contractual agreements between hotel companies and third-party vendors.

Regret A notification that the hotel has been shopped on its direct booking engine and a rate was given, but a guest chooses not to accept the reservation

Revenue per available room (RevPAR) A metric used to assess how well a hotel has managed their inventory and rates to optimize revenue. Calculated by multiplying occupancy by ADR. Revenue Generating Index (RGI) or RevPAR Index (RPI) A metric used to determine whether a property is achieving its fair share of revenue compared to a specific group of hotels (i.e. a competitive set). It is calculated by taking the RevPAR of the property and dividing it by the RevPAR of the competitive set (competitive set data collected through a third-party provider, such as STR). An RGI of above 1 indicates the property is achieving more than its fair share, while below 1 suggests that the hotels in the competitive set are eating into the properties’ pie. Traditionally, hotel operators will prefer to multiply the number by 100 (or convert into a percentage).

Revenue Management The art and science of predicting real-time customer demand and optimizing the price and availability of products to match that demand.

Revenue Strategy A more comprehensive approach to revenue management that encompasses not just pricing and demand optimization but also business intelligence as it relates to sales, marketing, distribution and other functions across the hotel enterprise. It also accounts for costs associated with customer acquisition and retention; leverages interdepartmental intelligence to facilitate a collaborative approach to revenue generation; and unlocks behavioral insights through new data sources and price elasticity testing.

Shoulder Date Nights that are next to full or very compressed dates. If a Friday and Saturday are forecasted to be sold out, and Sunday is not, it would be considered a shoulder date in that example.

Transient Non-group business.

Unconstrained Demand The forecast of how many rooms you could sell if you had an unlimited number of rooms.

Web Shopping Regrets and Denials When a hotel has been shopped online and a rate was given but the guest did not book a reservation (regret), or a rate was not given at all due to a restriction or sell out (denial).

Yield The dynamic pricing, overbooking and allocation of perishable assets to maximize revenue.

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