OPENSTAYS GLOSSARY
Hotel and homestay booking terms, explained simply
Plain English explanations of the booking, revenue and compliance words that show up on every vendor call, written for Indian property owners who would rather run their property than decode jargon.
If you have sat through a sales call and nodded along to words like channel manager, RevPAR or rate parity without being fully sure what they meant, you are in good company. Most hotel and homestay owners in India learn this vocabulary on the job, one confusing vendor pitch at a time and nobody ever sits them down to explain it properly.
This glossary is our attempt to do exactly that. Every term below is explained the way we would explain it to a friend who runs a six room homestay in Coorg or a twelve room hotel near a highway in Maharashtra, in plain language, with real Indian numbers and real Indian context, not textbook definitions copied from a software company’s website in another country. Each term links through to a full page that goes deeper, with examples, comparisons and answers to the questions owners actually ask.
▦ Booking & distribution
Booking engine
The software that lets a guest check availability and pay online, directly on your own website or link, without an OTA in between.
Online travel agency (OTA)
Platforms like the big listing sites that bring guests to your property in exchange for a commission on every booking.
Direct booking
Any reservation that comes to you without a middleman taking a cut, whether by phone, WhatsApp, website, or a guest walking in.
Zero-commission booking
A booking model where the property keeps the full room revenue and the software is paid for by subscription or a small usage fee instead of a percentage cut.
Booking link
A single shareable web address that opens your booking engine, so a guest can reserve a room from a WhatsApp message, Instagram bio, or Google listing.
Instant booking
A booking that confirms itself the moment a guest pays online, with no manual approval needed from the property.
Request to book
A booking flow where the guest sends a request first and the property owner accepts, adjusts, or declines it before payment is collected.
Group booking
A reservation covering multiple rooms for one group arriving together, usually with a single point of contact and its own rate.
Corporate booking
A booking made under a negotiated company rate, usually billed to a business account rather than paid directly by the traveller.
Metasearch
A search engine like Google Hotel Ads or Trivago that compares your rates across every channel and sends the guest to whichever one they click.
↗ Property & revenue management
Property management system (PMS)
The back office software that tracks rooms, guests, check-ins and housekeeping for a hotel or homestay, day to day.
Channel manager
Software that helps keep rates and availability aligned across supported booking channels. Refresh delays or failed updates can still cause booking conflicts.
Room inventory
The count of rooms or beds you have available to sell on any given night, across every channel you list on.
Rate plan
A defined package of price and conditions for a room, such as a refundable rate, a non-refundable rate, or a breakfast-included rate.
Dynamic pricing
Adjusting your room rates up or down based on demand, season and how full you already are, instead of charging one fixed price all year.
Occupancy rate
The percentage of your available rooms that were actually sold and occupied over a given period.
Average daily rate (ADR)
The average price you actually earned per occupied room in a given period, after discounts.
Revenue per available room (RevPAR)
The single number that combines occupancy and rate together, showing how much revenue every room in your property earned on average, sold or not.
Revenue management
The ongoing practice of adjusting rates and availability based on demand, so you sell the right room to the right guest at the right price.
₹ Rates & pricing
Best available rate (BAR)
The lowest unrestricted rate a property is currently offering for a room and the anchor every other channel’s price gets compared against.
Rate parity
Keeping the same room rate across every channel, so no OTA or wholesaler can consistently undercut your own direct price.
Net rate
The amount a property actually receives after commission or markup is deducted, as opposed to the higher figure the guest paid.
Gross rate
The full amount a guest actually pays for a booking, before any commission, markup, or wholesaler margin is taken out of it.
Non-refundable rate
A discounted rate a guest pays upfront in exchange for giving up the right to a refund if they cancel or don’t show up.
Seasonal pricing
Raising or lowering rates to match predictable seasonal demand, from wedding season peaks to monsoon lulls.
Booking window
The gap between when a guest books and when they actually arrive, which shapes how far in advance you should plan pricing.
Minimum stay
A rule requiring guests to book at least a set number of nights, often used to protect availability during high-demand periods.
Length of stay
How many nights a guest books in one reservation, a number that shapes pricing, housekeeping load and channel strategy alike.
☷ Front desk & guest operations
No-show
A confirmed guest who never arrives and never cancels, leaving the room empty and the revenue unclaimed unless a no-show policy applies.
Overbooking
Deliberately selling more rooms than you have, betting that cancellations and no-shows will even things out by check-in day.
Walk-in guest
Someone who arrives and books a room on the spot, without any prior reservation.
Early check-in
Letting a guest into their room before the property’s standard check-in time, whether offered freely or arranged in advance.
Late check-out
Letting a guest keep their room past the standard check-out time, usually for a few hours and sometimes for a small fee.
₹ Payments
Payment gateway
The technology that securely moves money from a guest’s card, UPI app, or net banking into your bank account when they pay online.
UPI hotel payment
Collecting bookings and advances through India’s UPI system, so guests can pay in seconds with any UPI app and the money lands directly with you.
Chargeback
A forced reversal of a card payment initiated by the guest’s bank after a dispute, which can claw back money you already received.
▤ Guest data & compliance
Guest CRM
A system that stores your guests’ contact details and stay history, so you can recognise repeat guests and invite them back directly.
Form C
The mandatory report every hotel and homestay must file with the FRRO whenever a foreign national checks in.
Digital guest register
An electronic version of the guest register every property is legally required to maintain, replacing the handwritten ledger at the front desk.
Star rating
Either the official classification awarded by the Ministry of Tourism, or the average guest review score shown on OTAs, two different things that share one name.