Resources
The vocabulary of hotel profitability.
Hospitality finance runs on acronyms that mean something very specific. Here is the plain-English version, plus the questions every buyer asks us.
FAQ
Questions buyers actually ask.
Glossary
Hospitality finance, decoded.
- USALI
- The Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry — the standard chart and reporting framework hotel owners, operators and franchisors report against.
- RevPAR
- Revenue per available room: room revenue divided by available room-nights. The headline top-line efficiency measure.
- GOPPAR
- Gross operating profit per available room — the profitability equivalent of RevPAR, and the number owners actually care about.
- ADR
- Average daily rate: room revenue divided by rooms sold.
- CPOR
- Cost per occupied room — the variable cost efficiency measure for the rooms department.
- Flow-through
- The share of incremental revenue that reaches gross operating profit. The cleanest test of operating discipline.
- Night audit
- The nightly close of the trading day: posting, balancing and reconciling every folio, check and tender before the next day begins.
- City ledger
- Receivables for corporate accounts, groups and OTAs — business that leaves the property before it pays.
- Tronc
- A UK arrangement for pooling and distributing tips and service charge among staff, with its own tax treatment.
- FF&E reserve
- A contractual fund, typically a percentage of revenue, set aside for furniture, fixtures and equipment renewal.
- Booking pace
- The rate at which future dates are filling versus the same point in prior years — the leading indicator behind demand-aware forecasting.
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