Hotel Terms & Acronyms
This is a reference page, not a read-once lesson, so bookmark it. The hotel world runs on shorthand, and your first weeks can feel like everyone is speaking a code nobody handed you. This glossary is that code, in plain English.
Terms marked with a star (⭐) are the ones every new hire should learn right away. The rest are here for when you run into them. Where a term has its own full training module, we linked it so you can go deeper.
Hotel Terms, A to Z
A
⭐ ADA: The Americans with Disabilities Act, the U.S. law that requires hotels to accommodate guests with disabilities, including service animals.
Adjacent rooms: Rooms near or next to each other that do not have a connecting door between them.
Adjoining rooms: Two rooms side by side that connect through a shared interior door. Different from adjacent rooms, which are next to each other but do not connect.
⭐ ADR: Average Daily Rate. The average price paid per occupied room in a period, found by dividing room revenue by the number of rooms sold. A core revenue metric. Example: if you sold 40 rooms and took in $4,000 in room revenue, your ADR is $4,000 divided by 40, which is $100.
Allocation: The number of rooms set aside for a specific group, channel, or wholesaler to sell.
ALOS: Average Length of Stay. The average number of nights guests stay, a useful read on demand patterns.
Amenities: The extras a hotel provides for comfort, from in-room toiletries and coffee to pools, fitness centers, and breakfast.
⭐ Arrival: A guest scheduled to check in on a given day. The arrivals list is what the front desk works from each shift.
Attrition: A group-contract clause setting how many of the blocked rooms a group can leave unused before owing a penalty, often written as a percentage. It exists because those rooms were held off the market for the group, so if the group does not fill them and it is too late to resell, the hotel needs protection. Example: on a 100-room block with 20 percent allowed attrition, the group must fill at least 80 rooms to avoid a charge.
B
⭐ Back of house: The areas guests do not see: housekeeping, laundry, maintenance, offices, and staff spaces. Opposite of front of house.
⭐ BAR: Best Available Rate. The lowest non-restricted rate offered for a date, the standard published rate a guest sees.
Bell staff: Employees who help guests with luggage and escort them to rooms, common at full-service hotels.
Blackout dates: Dates when a promotion, discount, or reward booking is not available, usually high-demand periods.
Block: A set of rooms held for a group, event, or company, usually at a negotiated rate.
Business date: The hotel's operating day for accounting purposes. It rolls over when night audit runs, not at midnight, so a charge made at 1 a.m. can still belong to the previous business day. This is why the calendar date and the business date do not always match, and why you post to the business date, not the clock.
C
Cage: The secured area or drawer where cash and the front desk bank are kept.
⭐ Cancellation policy: The rules for how far ahead a guest must cancel to avoid a charge.
Channel: Any route through which rooms are sold: the hotel's own site, OTAs, the GDS, phone, or walk-in.
Channel manager: Software that keeps rates and availability in sync across all the channels a hotel sells through.
⭐ Check-in: Registering an arriving guest, verifying ID and reservation, and issuing a key.
⭐ Check-out: Settling a departing guest's bill and releasing the room.
⭐ Comp: Short for complimentary. A room, service, or charge given free, often to fix a problem. Comping authority is usually limited by role.
⭐ Comp set: Competitive set. The handful of nearby, similar hotels a property measures itself against. Your own numbers only mean so much in isolation: 70 percent occupancy feels good until you learn your comp set ran 85 percent, which tells you the demand was there and you missed it.
Concierge: A staff member who assists guests with recommendations, reservations, tickets, and local arrangements.
Connecting rooms: Two rooms joined by a private interior door, so guests move between them without using the hallway.
Continental breakfast: A light breakfast of pastries, cereal, fruit, and coffee, without hot cooked-to-order food.
Corporate rate: A negotiated rate offered to a company's travelers, often loaded under an account code.
CRS: Central Reservation System. The system that manages a hotel's room inventory and rates across booking channels.
Cut-off date: The deadline for a group's guests to book their rooms in the block. After it passes, unsold rooms release back into general inventory so the hotel can sell them to anyone. It protects the hotel from holding empty group rooms right up to arrival.
D
Day rate: A reduced rate for daytime use of a room without an overnight stay. Also called a use rate.
⭐ Departure: A guest scheduled to check out on a given day. The departures list drives housekeeping's board.
Deposit: Money collected in advance to secure a booking, applied to the stay or forfeited under the cancellation terms.
⭐ DND: Do Not Disturb. A guest request not to be disturbed. Properties set a time limit after which a welfare check is required.
DOS: Director of Sales. The person who leads a hotel's sales effort and account relationships.
Double occupancy: A room booked for and priced around two guests.
Downgrade: Moving a guest to a lower room category than booked, usually due to availability, often with compensation.
Drop: To deposit cash from the drawer into the secured safe, and the recorded amount dropped.
E
Early check-in: Letting a guest into their room before standard check-in time, subject to availability.
Engineering: The department that maintains and repairs the building and its systems. Also called maintenance.
Extended stay: A stay of a week or more, and the hotel segment built for it, with kitchens and weekly housekeeping.
F
F&B: Food and Beverage. The department covering a hotel's restaurants, bars, banquets, and catering.
⭐ Folio: A guest's running account of all charges during their stay, room, tax, and incidentals, settled at check-out.
FOM: Front Office Manager. The person who runs the front desk operation and its staff.
⭐ Front of house: The guest-facing areas and roles: the lobby, front desk, and anywhere staff interact with guests.
Full-service hotel: A hotel offering a broad range of services, typically including a restaurant, room service, and meeting space.
G
GDS: Global Distribution System. The networks (Sabre, Amadeus) that travel agents and corporate tools use to book rooms.
⭐ GM: General Manager. The person responsible for the entire hotel operation.
GOPPAR: Gross Operating Profit Per Available Room. Like RevPAR, but instead of revenue it uses gross operating profit, what is left after operating expenses, divided by all available rooms. It matters because RevPAR only shows what you brought in, while GOPPAR shows what you actually kept. A hotel can post a strong RevPAR and still have weak GOPPAR if its costs are out of line, which is why owners and asset managers watch it closely.
Group rate: A negotiated per-room rate for a block of rooms booked together for an event, wedding, or company.
GSA: Guest Service Agent, another name for a front desk agent. Same role as a GSR at many properties.
⭐ GSR: Guest Service Representative. A front desk agent, the role authorized to verify guests and issue keys.
Guaranteed reservation: A booking secured with a card or deposit, so the room is held all night and a no-show can be charged.
H
House count: The number of guests currently in the hotel, used to plan breakfast, staffing, and service.
⭐ Housekeeping: The department responsible for cleaning guest rooms and public areas and for reporting room status.
Housekeeping report: The list of room statuses housekeeping produces and reconciles with the front desk each day.
I
⭐ Incidentals: Charges beyond the room rate, such as minibar, parking, or damage, usually covered by a hold on the guest's card.
Inventory: The rooms a hotel has available to sell. Managing inventory means controlling how many rooms are open at which rates.
K
Key sleeve: The little paper folder a room key goes in, where the room number is written rather than said aloud.
L
Late check-out: Allowing a guest to leave later than standard check-out time, subject to availability and sometimes a fee.
Lead: A potential piece of business, such as a company or group that might book rooms.
LNR: Local Negotiated Rate. A discounted rate agreed with a nearby company for its business travelers.
Loyalty program: A brand's rewards program giving repeat guests points, perks, and status tiers. Beyond keeping guests coming back, it lets a hotel offer members a special rate that sits outside general-public pricing, so it can be lower than the OTA rate without breaking rate parity. That is a major reason properties push guests to join and to book direct.
M
⭐ Master key: A key or credential that opens many or all guest rooms. Because a lost or misused master defeats the security of every room it opens, it is tracked, signed out, and guarded closely. Treat it as one of the most sensitive things you will ever hold on shift.
MLOS: Minimum Length of Stay. A booking rule that says a guest must stay at least a set number of nights to reserve a given date. Hotels apply it around high-demand periods so a sold-out peak night does not get eaten up by one-night bookings, leaving the surrounding nights empty. Example: putting a two-night MLOS on a big event Saturday forces those guests to also take the Friday or Sunday, filling nights that might otherwise go unsold. Do not confuse it with ALOS, which measures the average stay that actually happened; MLOS is a rule you set, ALOS is a number you look back on.
MSDS: Material Safety Data Sheet, the older name for what is now an SDS. The two mean the same thing.
MTD: Month to Date. A figure totaled from the first of the month through today.
N
⭐ Night audit: The overnight process that closes out the business day, reconciles every account, and posts the room and tax charges to guest folios. It runs at night because that is the quiet point when few transactions are happening, so the books can be balanced cleanly before the new day begins. The person who runs it is the night auditor.
⭐ No-show: A guest with a reservation who never arrives and never cancels. If the booking was guaranteed with a card, the hotel can charge the agreed penalty, usually one night, because the room was held empty and could not be sold to anyone else.
O
⭐ Occupancy: The percentage of available rooms sold for a night, one of the three core performance metrics. Found by dividing rooms sold by rooms available. Example: if 80 of your 100 rooms are sold, occupancy is 80 divided by 100, which is 80 percent.
⭐ OOO: Out of Order. A room pulled from inventory because it cannot be sold, usually for maintenance or damage.
OOS: Out of Service. A room temporarily blocked from selling for a minor issue but not fully out of order. Usage varies.
OPIM: Other Potentially Infectious Materials, a bloodborne-pathogens term for body fluids beyond blood that may carry infection.
⭐ OTA: Online Travel Agency, such as Expedia or Booking.com. A third-party site that sells your rooms and takes a commission on each booking, often 15 to 25 percent. They bring in guests you might not otherwise reach, but that commission is why hotels push so hard to win direct bookings on their own website.
Overbooking: Deliberately taking more reservations than there are rooms. It sounds reckless, but hotels do it on purpose, betting that enough cancellations and no-shows will even it out, so they do not finish the night with empty rooms they could have sold. The risk is that if too many guests actually show up, someone has to be walked.
P
Package rate: A room rate bundled with extras like breakfast, parking, or tickets, sold as one price.
Par: One par is one complete set of an item, enough to fully outfit the entire hotel guest-ready, one for every spot that needs it. Example: if the hotel has 90 beds, 60 that take a queen comforter and 30 that take a king, then one par of comforters is 60 queens plus 30 kings, exactly what it takes to dress every bed once. Hotels then keep multiple pars so they are never caught short while items are in use or being cleaned. Linens are the classic case: a property often keeps about three par, roughly one on the beds, one in the laundry, and one clean on the shelf, so a room can always be turned even while another set is being washed. The same idea applies to towels, guest supplies, and amenities: decide how many par you need, count what you have against it, and replenish before you run out. Too few par and you run short at the worst moment, too many and you tie up money and space in stock that just sits there. (Not to be confused with PAR meaning Per Available Room, the revenue term in the next entry.)
PAR (Per Available Room): A different use of the letters, seen inside revenue metrics rather than in housekeeping. It means a figure is measured across every available room, sold or not. RevPAR is Revenue Per Available Room, and you will also see GOPPAR (gross operating profit per available room) and TRevPAR (total revenue per available room). So when PAR shows up in an acronym, it is about revenue math, not about how many towels are on the shelf.
Pax: Industry shorthand for the number of persons or guests.
Peak night: The highest-occupancy night within a group's stay or a given period.
Pickup: The rooms actually booked from a group block, or the pace at which reservations are coming in.
⭐ PMS: Property Management System. The core software that runs reservations, check-in and check-out, folios, and room status.
⭐ Pre-authorization: A temporary hold placed on a guest's card at check-in to cover the room and expected incidentals. It is not an actual charge, but it does reduce the guest's available balance until it drops off, which is why guests sometimes think they were charged twice. Being able to explain this calmly heads off a common front desk complaint.
Public areas: The shared guest spaces like the lobby, hallways, pool, and fitness room, cleaned and maintained by staff.
Q
Qualified rate or discount: A special price a guest only gets if they meet some condition, such as being a loyalty member, a AAA or AARP member, military, a senior, or a corporate account holder. The two words describe the same idea from different angles: the qualified rate is the final price the guest pays, while the qualified discount is the amount taken off to get there. You might hear either. Because it is not open to the general public, a qualified rate can sit below the OTA rate without breaking rate parity, even when the price is shown publicly with its label attached. This is the main tool hotels use to reward direct bookers and beat OTA pricing legitimately.
R
⭐ Rack rate: The standard published rate for a room before any discount, the full sticker price. Almost nobody actually pays it, since most guests book some discounted or negotiated rate, but it is the ceiling everything else is measured down from.
Rate parity: An agreement that whatever rate or promotion you offer the general public, you also offer the OTA, so you are not undercutting them with a public deal they do not get. It is not simply about matching a number, it is about the public rate being the same everywhere. The main way a hotel legitimately goes below the OTA price is with a qualified rate or discount, which is not a general-public rate and so does not break parity. See the entry for Qualified rate or discount.
Revenue management: Adjusting rates and availability by demand to maximize revenue. The key idea is that a room's price is not fixed. As a night fills up, the rate usually climbs, so the first rooms you sell and the last few often go at very different prices, and the rate for the same room can change day to day or even hour to hour based on how demand is shaping up. It is the same logic airlines use. This is why a guest who booked months ago may have paid far less, or far more, than the guest who booked this morning. One of the main tools inside revenue management is yielding, which is closing off discounted rate codes on high-demand dates (see yield management).
⭐ RevPAR: Revenue Per Available Room. Room revenue divided by all available rooms (whether sold or not), blending occupancy and rate into one number. The key measure of performance. Example: $8,000 in room revenue across 100 available rooms is a RevPAR of $80. You can also get there by multiplying ADR by occupancy: an $100 ADR at 80 percent occupancy is also $80.
RFP: Request for Proposal. A company's or planner's formal request for hotels to bid rates and terms for their business.
Rollaway: A portable folding bed brought into a room for an extra guest.
⭐ Room status: The current state of a room, such as occupied, vacant clean, vacant dirty, or out of order, tracked between front desk and housekeeping.
Rooming list: The list a group gives the hotel showing who stays in which room and when.
Run of house: A rate or booking where the hotel assigns the specific room, rather than the guest choosing.
S
⭐ SDS: Safety Data Sheet. The standardized document listing a chemical's hazards and safe handling. Formerly an MSDS.
Select-service hotel: A hotel offering a focused set of services, often free breakfast and limited amenities, without a full restaurant. Common for independents.
Shop: To check competitors' rates and availability, whether by phone, online, or in person.
Shoulder date: A date just before or after a peak period, with moderate demand.
Skip: A guest who leaves without paying their bill. Also called a skip-out.
SOP: Standard Operating Procedure. The written, agreed way a task is supposed to be done.
⭐ Stayover: A guest staying another night and not checking out, so the room is serviced but not turned.
STR report: A benchmarking report (from the company STR) comparing a hotel's occupancy, ADR, and RevPAR against its comp set. Also called a STAR report.
Suite: A larger room or set of connected rooms with a separate living area.
T
Transient: Individual guests booking on their own, as opposed to group business. A core market segment.
⭐ Turn a room: To clean and reset a departed guest's room so it is ready to sell again.
Turndown service: An evening housekeeping visit that readies the room for sleep, common at upscale hotels.
U
Upgrade: Moving a guest to a better room than booked, as a courtesy, a perk, or to solve a problem.
Upsell: Offering a guest a higher room type or an add-on for more money. Done well, it is not pushy, it is matching a guest to something they will genuinely enjoy, like a suite for an anniversary. It lifts revenue and guest satisfaction at once when it is about the guest and not just the sale.
V
⭐ Vacant clean: A room that is empty and cleaned, ready to sell. Often shown as VC or 'ready'.
⭐ Vacant dirty: A room that is empty but not yet cleaned. Often shown as VD.
VIP: A guest flagged for special attention, whether for status, loyalty tier, or a special occasion.
W
⭐ Walk: To send a guest who holds a reservation to another hotel because you have no room for them, usually paying for that first night and their transport. It is a last resort, it is expensive, and it makes for a very unhappy guest, which is why hotels work hard to avoid it. It usually happens when a property has overbooked or has more rooms out of order than expected.
Walk rate: The rate a hotel is willing to pay to place a walked guest at another property.
⭐ Walk-in: A guest who arrives without a reservation and asks for a room.
Welfare check: Entering a room to confirm a guest is okay after a set period of no contact or continuous Do Not Disturb.
Y
Yield management: The part of revenue management focused on controlling which rates can book, not just what the number is. Yielding means closing off discounted rate codes and promotions on high-demand dates so lower-rated business does not take rooms you can sell at full price. Example: for a large demand event you might close your local negotiated rates and other discounts for those nights, so the rooms go to full-rate guests instead of being booked cheap. On slow dates you open those codes back up to capture any business you can. Same room, but who is allowed to book it at what rate is turned on and off by demand.
YTD: Year to Date. A figure totaled from the start of the year through today.
Z
Zero out: To settle a guest's folio to a zero balance at check-out.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which terms should a brand-new hire learn first?
The starred (⭐) ones. They cover the everyday language of the front desk and housekeeping: check-in and check-out, walk-in, no-show, folio, DND, OOO, stayover, and the core metrics like ADR, occupancy, and RevPAR. Learn those and you can follow most shift conversations.
What is the difference between ADR, occupancy, and RevPAR?
Occupancy is how full you are, ADR is the average price of the rooms you sold, and RevPAR blends the two into revenue per available room. Say you have 100 rooms, sell 80 of them, and take in $8,000 in room revenue. Occupancy is 80 percent (80 of 100), ADR is $100 (8,000 divided by the 80 sold), and RevPAR is $80 (8,000 across all 100 available, which also equals ADR times occupancy). A hotel can post high occupancy at a low rate or a high rate at low occupancy, and RevPAR is the number that shows how you are really doing.
Are these terms the same at every hotel?
Most are standard across the industry, but a few vary by brand or property, especially room-status codes and a handful of acronyms. When a term is used differently where you work, your property's usage wins. Treat this as the general meaning, then learn your house's specifics.
