Short-term rental pricing glossary

The vocabulary of rental pricing is small, and most of it is borrowed from hotels — which is why so much of it is subtly wrong when applied to a single house. Each term here gets the formula where one exists, and the specific way the number misleads people, because that second part is usually what actually costs money.

• ADR (Average Daily Rate)

  The average nightly rate actually paid across the nights you sold — it says nothing about the nights you did not sell.

• Booking pace

  How fast a future date is filling compared with how fast it normally fills by the same point — the earliest honest signal that a rate is wrong.

• Comp set (comparable set)

  The specific properties a guest is actually choosing between when they choose yours — not simply the nearest listings.

• Dynamic pricing

  Setting each night's rate from current demand rather than a fixed calendar — the discipline, not any particular tool.

• Lead time (booking window)

  The number of days between when a guest books and when they arrive — the thing that decides how much time your pricing has left to work.

• Length-of-stay discount

  A reduction applied for longer bookings — worth it only when the nights it buys would genuinely not have sold separately.

• Minimum stay (min-night requirement)

  The fewest nights a guest may book — a lever that protects your turnover costs and destroys your occupancy in equal measure if left static.

• Occupancy rate

  The share of your available nights that sold — accurate only if 'available' genuinely means bookable.

• Orphan night

  A gap between two bookings that is shorter than your minimum stay, so nobody can book it at any price.

• RevPAR (Revenue Per Available Rental)

  Revenue divided by every night the property was available — the single number that cannot be improved by simply pricing yourself out of the market.