Glossary of hotel terms
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| Why | Remove the language barrier: an unfamiliar industry term is explained in a sentence or two right in the glossary. |
| Who | People new to the hotel business — and anyone who meets an unfamiliar term in the docs or in the system. |
Terms are listed alphabetically; the definitions are deliberately short — this is a dictionary, not a manual.
Arrival and departure
Section titled “Arrival and departure”The dates a guest arrives at the hotel and leaves it. These are the words of the day’s tiles and lists: “arrivals” — who is coming in today, “departures” — who is leaving.
Availability
Section titled “Availability”How many rooms or places the hotel can sell on each date. The hotel sees the same number in its calendar as every connected sales channel does.
The sellable unit in a hostel: in a dorm the guest pays not for the room but for one bed in it. An eight-bed room is eight separate sales.
Booking Engine
Section titled “Booking Engine”The booking module on the hotel’s own website: the guest picks a room and rate and pays without leaving your site. Every such booking lands in the Planner immediately.
Cash desk
Section titled “Cash desk”Where the hotel’s physical money is tracked: payments at the front desk, refunds, change. In the system the cash desk is not a machine but a section showing everything that passed through the desk in a day.
Cashier shift
Section titled “Cashier shift”A working day of one cash desk: the shift is opened before payments start and closed with the amounts reconciled. This is how no payment gets lost at the desk.
Channel
Section titled “Channel”Any place where the hotel sells its rooms: Booking.com, Airbnb, the hotel’s own website. Your site and the aggregators are equals in the system — they are all sales channels.
Channel Manager
Section titled “Channel Manager”The module that connects the Planner to sales channels: prices and availability flow out to the channels on their own, and the channels’ bookings arrive in the calendar.
Check-in and check-out
Section titled “Check-in and check-out”The procedure itself, not the date: check-in — registering the guest, keys, opening the bill; check-out — settling the bill and returning the keys. The arrival date is the plan; check-in is the action.
Deposit hold
Section titled “Deposit hold”A way to protect the booking without taking money: the guest’s card is blocked for the needed amount, but no payment goes through. If the guest never arrives or leaves without paying, the hotel charges the blocked amount.
Direct bookings
Section titled “Direct bookings”Bookings made on the hotel’s own website rather than on aggregators — the hotel pays no channel commission for them. The Booking Engine brings them in: the guest books where they read about the rooms.
A shared hostel room for several guests, where each pays for their own place, not for the whole room. Dorms come as mixed, female-only or male-only.
Double booking
Section titled “Double booking”An accidental sale of the same room twice — usually when a channel and the front desk sell it at the same moment. The conflict is visible in the Planner, and the booking is moved to a free room of the same type.
Guest Portal
Section titled “Guest Portal”The guest’s personal page for one booking: it opens from a link in the email, with nothing to install and no password. Inside — the booking with prices by day, hotel services to order, and questions and answers with the hotel.
Minimum stay
Section titled “Minimum stay”A restriction on a date: an arrival is only possible if the guest stays at least the set number of nights. Hotels set it on holidays and high season so that short stays do not occupy the most valuable dates.
No-show
Section titled “No-show”The guest did not arrive on the check-in date and did not cancel the booking. What happens to such a booking — whether the prepayment is kept — follows the hotel’s own cancellation rules.
Online travel agencies — Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia: places where guests search accommodation across many hotels at once. The hotel usually pays a commission for every booking coming from them.
The system that runs the hotel: the Planner, room inventory, guests, money and channels — in one place. HotelsCalendar is a PMS, and the Booking Engine and Channel Manager are its modules.
Planner
Section titled “Planner”The main screen for working with bookings: rooms in rows, dates in columns, bookings as colored bars. From here you create and drag bookings, see the day’s arrivals and departures, and resolve conflicts. How it works — in the Planner article.
Prepayment
Section titled “Prepayment”Money the guest has actually paid before arrival — for example, when booking on your website. It differs from a deposit hold: there the card is only blocked, here the payment has gone through.
Property
Section titled “Property”A hotel, hostel, apartment rental or guesthouse as a single unit of management in the system. The word lets you talk about any type of accommodation the same way.
The price per night for a room type: what the guest pays for one night of their stay.
Rate plan
Section titled “Rate plan”The conditions a rate lives by: minimum and maximum stay, arrival and departure closures, price inheritance from another rate. More in the rates article.
Room inventory
Section titled “Room inventory”All the rooms and units the hotel sells, together with their types. Availability on each date is drawn from the inventory.
Room type
Section titled “Room type”The kind of room the hotel sells: “standard”, “deluxe”, “twin with two beds”. A type in the system and the identically named type in a channel are the same room for the guest.
Stop-sell
Section titled “Stop-sell”A ban on selling a date or room type through the connected channels: sales on the channel are stopped, while the room stays available inside the system. How to set it — in the Channel Manager article.
Voucher
Section titled “Voucher”A document confirming a paid booking: the guest shows it at the front desk to check in. The same word is used for a discount coupon — the text should make clear which one is meant.
Walk-in
Section titled “Walk-in”A guest who walks up to the front desk with no booking and gets a room on the spot — if one is free for the date.