Vacation Rental Glossary

Vacation rental metrics or key performance indicators are critical measurable aspects of your business that you can lean on to understand and manage your business better. From occupancy rates to referrals your vacation rental is getting, it can be helpful to track these metrics. “You can’t improve what you don’t measure!”

If you understand the business metrics, you and/or the vacation rentals’ manager will be able to analyze the return on your investment and return on revenue more accurately to improve your operations.

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  • Accessible Tourism -

    Accessible tourism is a conscious effort to provide an all-inclusive travel experience. It essentially means that tourist destinations, services, stays, and products are accessible to all people regardless of their physical or intellectual limitations, disabilities and/or age.

  • Active Dates -

    Active dates indicate how many days the listing was open to reservations. For example, some host might block off their winter calendar for 3 months and not take bookings during that time. Or it could be a new listing that only started 9 months back. In such cases, we'd report 270 days as active days in the last year.

  • Active Listing -

    A listing that is live on Airbnb or VRBO (or it was during the last 15 days).

  • Adjacent factor -

    The Adjacent Factor customization will adjust the rate for the selected number of days before and after a booking.

  • Airbnb Plus -

    Airbnb plus is a program by Airbnb that incentivises hosts for their exceptional guest experience. These properties receive benefits such as higher visibility, improved reputation, and added services. It is a selection of the highest quality homes with hosts known for great reviews and attention to detail. Every home is verified through in-person quality inspection to ensure quality and design.

  • Airbnb Superhost -

    Airbnb superhost is a host who prioritizes guest experiences and ensures that every one has a great stay in their Airbnb. Airbnb evaluates hosts quarterly and will automatically adjust your status if you meet their qualifications. You can get up to 22% more bookings by becoming a Airbnb superhost.

  • Alternative Accommodation -

    Alternative accommodations are used to refer to non-hotel accommodation offerings. These are private rental accommodations that have been popularized by platforms like Airbnb.

  • Amenity Fee -

    Sometimes also called resort fee. Extra amount that guests pay on top of the nightly price to access certain amenities of the vacation rental like swimming pools, tennis courts, barbeque nights, etc.

  • API -

    API is an acronym for Application Programming Interface. It is a software intermediary that allows two or more applications to communicate with each other. You can create an integration between two software platforms that allow data sharing.

  • Availability outlook -

    It is a visual representation of the future availability of a listing.

  • Average Booking Window -

    It is calculated as the average number of days between the day of reservation and check-in.

  • Average Daily Rate -

    It is the total rent divided by the number of nights within a given time period. An indicator of the average price of a vacation rental, it is calculated by dividing the total revenue generated in a vacation rental by the number of nights the vacation rental was booked. It is essentially the booked rate, and does not include the prices for open nights. 

  • Average lead time -

    Mid-positioned time in which guests are booking before the start of the reservation.

  • Average Length Of Stay -

    It is used to calculate the number of nights the average guest has booked in the  property. It is calculated by dividing the total number of nights the vacation rental is booked by the total number of reservations. This is a vital metric to track because an increase in short-term stays can increase maintenance and operation costs in your vacation rental  property. 

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  • Base Price -

    Base price is the average rate a property manager charges for a listing annually. All market factors, demand patterns, and customisations are applied to the base price. This rate will fluctuate based on the quality of the listing.

  • Bedroom category -

    By default, listings in the Market Dashboard are grouped by the number of bedrooms they advertise on Airbnb. In addition, a “Room” category groups all listings with 0 or 1 bedroom advertising as a shared, private, or hotel room.

  • Blackout Dates -

    These are specific dates where vacation rental managers do not accept any reservations. This can be because the vacation rental is booked for personal reasons or even maintenance.

  • Booked dates -

    Booked dates are a time period where we consider the bookings that were received and whether the stay dates for those bookings have occurred yet or not.

  • Booked nightly/weekly/monthly price -

    Booked price is the price per night for bookings with a certain length of stay. Booked Nightly Price would consider all bookings, Booked Weekly Price would consider bookings with a length of stay greater than or equal to 7, and Booked Monthly Price would consider bookings with a length of stay greater than 30. Length of Stay discounts are included.

  • Booking Curve -

    Booking curve is a tool that visually represents the number of reservations booked over a certain period of time. You can use this to analyze your booking trends, such as when people book reservations on your property.

  • Booking Fee -

    Fees that agencies, channels or websites charge guests for booking through them. It is basically the administrative fee that channels, agencies, or websites charge on top of your daily rate.

  • Booking Pace -

    The rate at which bookings are made in a vacation rental during a set time period.

  • Booking window -

    The booking window is the number of days between when the booking was made and the first stay date for that booking. A same-day booking, where the first stay date is the same as the booked date, would have a Booking Window of 0. If someone books today to start their stay tomorrow, that would be a Booking Window of 1. Etc.

  • Break-Even Point -

    It is the point when the monthly rental income is enough to pay all operating expenses.

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  • Cancellation Fee -

    Fees that guests have to pay if they cancel after the cancellation deadline has expired. These can be a flat amount withheld from the refund. They can also be a full forfeiture of the deposit paid. Deposits are often a percentage of the total cost, for example, 30% or 50%. These are usually non-refundable. In the US, it is always included in the rental agreement or contract.

  • Cancellation Rate -

    It is the percentage of reservations that have been canceled during a specified period of time.

  • Changeover Days -

    Specific days of the week that vacation rental managers dedicate for bookings to begin and end. It essentially is the check-in and check-out date.

  • Channel Fee -

    Fees that agencies, channels, or websites charge owners or vacation rental managers for booking through them. In the case of Airbnb, it is charged to the guests as a service fee in addition to a percent commission to the owner or property manager.

  • Channel Manager -

    A channel manager is a software tool that allows you to sell rooms on several connected booking sites (channels) simultaneously. The software will automatically update your availability across sites when a booking is made. Essentially, it is the technological equivalent of having a 24/7 global sales and reservations department.

  • Channels -

    Channels are places where people list their property. and guests can book slots there. Example, tripadvisor, booking.com, etc. You can list your property. , book slots for guests, and automatically send bookings to the property management system or channel manager through channels.

  • Cleaning Fee -

    A one-time charge by hosts to guests for cleaning the vacation rentals. The cleaning happens in the window between guests’ check-out and other guests’ check-in. This can be effective for guests’ who have booked longer stays.

  • Comp set -

    A ‘Comp set’ or competitive set is a list of other competing properties within a specific market that potential customers compare against your listing when booking a property. It is a group that you put together when creating your competitive study based on relevant, specific selection criteria compared to your property.

  • Cosmetic Upgrades -

    This tracks the number of home improvements that impact the property’s visual appeal. Home improvements can be anything from a simple painting being hung in your lobby to a complete makeover of your property.

  • Custom seasonal factor -

    You can use this customization to use seasonal base prices instead of PriceLabs market-based seasonality.

  • Custom seasonal profile -

    Custom Seasonal Profiles let you set different minimum, base, and maximum prices for different seasons throughout the year, giving you full control over each listing’s seasonality.

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  • Daily variations -

    Daily variations in demand are things that can change quite a bit from one stay date to the next based on how much more demand we're seeing for a certain stay date compared to another - these fluctuations could be because of holidays, events, day of week fluctuations, etc.

  • Damage Deposit -

    Also known as a security deposit, this is a refundable amount which a vacation rentals owner collects from their guests. This is a guarantee that guests will return the vacation rentals in the same condition. If there are any damages to the property, the host can make deductions from the damage deposit.

  • Data-specific overrides -

    If you want to make specific exceptions and adjustments to specific days in your calendar, you can use this feature - date-specific overrides. This will enable different pricing for specific dates without altering your pricing for the entire calendar. Read more here.

  • Day of the week trends -

    You might be in a locality where each day of the week might behave differently. You can use this customization to treat each day of the week differently.

  • Define your own weekened -

    With this customization, you can define the days of your weekend if you are in a market where the weekend differs from the rest of the world. Or the demand for weekend bookings might be different in your locality than in the rest of the world. You can use this feature to define the weekend how you want. 

  • Demand factor -

    The algorithm picks up the demand for the listing by incorporating day-of-week trends, events, and holidays into the demand forecasting process. The algorithm also picks up the booking trends in the market to forecast a high/low demand.

  • Demand factor aggressiveness -

    With this customization, you can choose the aggressiveness with which our demand factor should impact price recommendations. The Demand factor aggressiveness percentage increases or decreases depending on the market and dates, but it changes approximately by 50%.

  • Depth Of Inventory -

    It is the number of similar vacation rentals that are available in the specified area.

  • Dynamic Pricing -

    Dynamic pricing utilizes variables rather than fixed prices to continuously adjust your prices in response to real-time supply and demand. This allows businesses to maximize revenue with automatic pricing adjustments instead of manual adjustments.

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  • Extra-fee -

    You might have a base number of guests; if the number of guests exceeds that number, the property manager/owner charges an extra fee for each person over the limit. Read more here.

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  • Far out premium -

    If you prefer to lock in revenue farther out, our far-out premium customization can help you turn the default far-out premium off. If you want to fine-tune the far-out premium, you can turn this setting off by selecting " No far-out premium", as seen in the screenshot below, and use  Occupancy Based Adjustments to create a custom far-out premium.

  • Future Price -

    The Future Prices graph details how property managers price their properties for future dates.

  • Future prices and occupancy -

    This graph in Neighborhood Data will show you the prices and the occupancy for the next one year.

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  • Gross Booking Revenue -

    The total revenue that a vacation rental earns from bookings including taxes and fees.

  • Group customization -

    This is a useful feature if you have a large portfolio. You can assign each listing of similar settings to a group. This will help you make changes to customizations in one session altogether. Read more here.

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  • Historic trends -

    We analyze your listings and the market’s past (historical) data to recommend prices for your listing. 

  • Hotel data -

    If you are curious about how hotels in your area? Then this feature will be helpful. We display the nightly rates of up to 10 nearby hotels in the Neighborhood Data dashboard.

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  • Inquiry To Booking Conversion Rate -

    It is calculated by multiplying the number of inquiries received into the total number of bookings for the property.

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  • Last Synced -

    This gives an indication of when the listing has been last updated. New listings will show as ‘not synced.’ Read more on that here.

  • Length of stay (LOS) -

    The number of nights a booking is for. For a booking where guests check in Friday and check out Sunday, the Length of Stay would be 2 (Friday night and Saturday night).

  • Length of stay and booking window trends -

    In the length of stay and booking window trends graph, you can see how many nights get booked from reservations with different booking windows and stay lengths.

  • Length of stay pricing -

    This customization considers the number of nights the guest is planning to stay. Based on the length of stay, this sets a ‘percentage’ price change on the recommended price.

  • Listing -

    A vacation rental that is open for bookings. For example, if you are renting multiple rooms within one apartment, then each room that you have made available for booking is a listing.

  • Listing Health -

    Listing health is the indicator of your property’s performance against your property and the market in any specified period. You can set any period of time that you want to analyze. For example, if your property has been booked for 15 out of 30 days, your listing occupancy would be 15%. You can compare this with that of the market (average market listing health) and understand how close to or far from the market occupancy your listing is.

  • Listing level metrics -

    The listing insights scatter plot is a great way to quickly identify how each listing in your portfolio is doing. The default view shows the next 30 days' occupancy on the y-axis and days since a listing last got booked on the x-axis (both x- and y-axes are configurable if you want to look at some other metrics)

  • Listing Name -

    Your Listing name is imported from channels /OTAs, this can not be changed on PriceLabs. However, you can use tags to nickname your listing to easily identify them. With the name, the channel/PMS and the account the listing belongs to is mentioned. This hyperlink will take you to the listing page or calendar in your PMS or channel listing page.

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  • Mapped listings -

    Mapped listings are listings that you have mapped. One of them would be parent listing and the other child listing. You can read more about it here.

  • Market history -

    Market History charts show the average revenue, occupancy, booking window, and length of stay for listings that saw bookings in that month.

  • Market percentile calculator -

    In PriceLabs, percentiles are used frequently to understand how a property is priced relative to the market. It is a way of expressing where an observation falls in a range of other observations.

  • Maximum Price -

    This is the maximum price a property manager sets for their listing. Even with multiple customizations on your base price, the pricing will not exceed the max price.

  • Minimum Price -

    Min price is the lowest price of a property. If you add a date-specific override, then your minimum price is bound to be the override. For example, if you have a minimum price of $70 and you set a date-specific override of $50, then your minimum price will be $50. (You will also be shown a pop-up or warning about the change, once you confirm it, the change will happen).

  • Minimum stay update -

    With this customization, you can update the minimum length of stay customizations for your listing. Read more here.

  • Monthly discounts -

    You can use this customization to add monthly percentage discounts for your listings.

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  • Neighborhood and profile data source - -

    With this customization, you can select the source for Neighborhood Data.

  • Neighborhood data -

    Neighborhood data compares your listing's prices & occupancy with other properties around this listing. Read more here.

  • Net Operating Income (NOI) -

    It is used to analyze the profitability of a vacation rental calculated by subtracting all necessary operating expenses from the sum of the revenue from the property.

  • Nightly Price Or Daily Rate -

    Price per night advertised to the consumer by the vacation rental manager or the channel. It essentially is the price that your potential customers pay to stay in your vacation rental. This is always rent-only or could also include external fees depending on the channel.

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  • Occupancy -

    We estimate the occupancy of each listing after applying our block-removal logic (see 'block removal' below). Read more here.

  • Occupancy Forecast -

    It is the occupancy that a vacation rental is expected to book within a specific period of time.

  • Occupancy Rate -

    It is the percentage of occupied nights out of the total nights in a given time period. It is the ratio of rented or used space to the total amount of available space. 

  • Occupancy-based adjustments -

    Occupancy-based adjustment looks at your listings' horizontal occupancy and adjusts your rates accordingly. This factor helps us to consider your property's performance and not just the market when recommending prices. Read more here.

  • Online Travel Agencies (OTA) -

    OTAs are places where people can book hotels, short term rentals, cars, and tours. You can list your service, book slots for guests, and automatically send bookings to the property management system or channel manager through channels.

  • Orphan day -

    An orphan day is a gap in between your bookings in your calendar. You can read more about it here.

  • Orphan Gaps -

    An orphan gap occurs when some nights are left unbookable due to minimum requirements set in length of stay. For example, if you require a 7 night minimum and bookings leave less than 7 nights open between the last checkout and next check-in.

  • OTA Ranking -

    OTA ranking is the method to rank vacation rental properties based on the quality and completeness of their visual and textual content. It is influenced by: photos and text descriptions, reviews, commission, conversion, quality of content.

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  • Pacing -

    With Pacing, you can look at your listed rates and occupancy for future dates and overlay it with the same data from a Market Dashboard to easily identify where your prices stand against the market and how your occupancy relates to the market.

  • Parent and child listings -

    These are mapped listings. Parent listing is the main listing in which you can make all changes. These changes will be reflected in the child listing. 

  • Percentile -

    The percentage of listings that fall at or below the given value. For example, if the 25th percentile price is $144, that means 25% of listings have a price equal to or lower than $144.

  • Portfolio occupancy-based adjustments -

    Portfolio occupancy-based adjustment looks at your portfolio’s horizontal occupancy and adjusts your rates accordingly. This factor helps us to consider your portfolio’s performance and not just the market when recommending prices. Read more here.

  • Preparation Time Before Arrival (PTBA) -

    It is the minimum number of days required to prepare the vacation rentals for the booking.

  • Price and accupancy trends -

    Key Future Dates spotlights a few dates with a higher occupancy percentage than those surrounding them. You can use the dates shown here to spot emerging high-demand periods and adjust pricing and stay requirements accordingly. You can check out how each of these dates appears on the Future Occupancy Chart below to compare how bookings are being made on surrounding dates.

  • Pricing calender -

    The pricing calendar shows recommended prices for each available night in the future. 

  • Pricing offset -

    The Pricing Offset customization sets a "Fixed" or "Percent" price change on the Recommended Price (after all other customizations have been applied).

  • Pricing offsets for mapped listings -

    If you want Airbnb prices to be higher than Vrbo prices, this can be done by going to the Airbnb account level customizations and editing this. Here, you can enter the desired offset value.

  • Property -

    It could be a standalone building on your land or a combination of multiple buildings. For example, an apartment building is a property. It would also include individual condo or apartment units, not just the whole building.

  • Property Management System -

    Property management systems (PMS) are designed to take care of the day-to-day operations of vacation rentals. They integrate with various other systems offering a wider range of operations management tools such as storing and tracking availability of all accommodations, coordinating cleaning & maintenance activities, guest messaging, and sending availability and rate information to the channel manager. 

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  • Return On Investment (ROI) -

    It is used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment by dividing the profit from the vacation rentals by the cost of the property.

  • Return On Revenue (ROR) -

    It is used to measure the profitability of the vacation rentals by comparing the net income generated for each revenue.

  • Revenue -

    We use the last seen price to estimate the revenue from the booking at that point (cleaning fee, extra guest fee, etc, are not included in the estimate).

  • Review prices -

    Review prices dashboard will show a snapshot of your individual listing’s performance. You can look at your listing’s customizations, pricing calendar, and neighborhood data.

  • RevPar -

    RevPAR can effectively predict your ADR’s success at filling available rooms. This, therefore, provides a constructive view on your property’s operational performance. It is the balance between the occupancy rate and ADR that is, it is the occupancy rate multiplied by the average daily rate.

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  • Scraped data -

    Data that comes from publicly viewable websites and pages. For listings, some examples of data we scrape are future prices, future available dates, and listing info such as the number of bedrooms and amenities included.

  • Seasonal trends -

    Seasonal trends refer to the pattern of demand and pricing changes that occur over different seasons and events.

  • Seasonality graph -

    We apply seasonal factors estimated from historic rentals and hotels in the area. Note that the seasonality is for a broad region. You can customize this by applying custom seasonal base prices.

  • Stay dates -

    Stay dates are a time period where we consider bookings where guests have stayed at the listing during the period. “Past 30 Stay Dates” can be read as “In the past 30 days for bookings where guests have stayed”.

  • Stay length -

    This metric defines the length of stay of your guests’ bookings. 

  • Sync prices -

    Sync prices toggle shows the current status of the property. Prices get updated every night if the switch is ON and green. If the switch is OFF and gray then we will not change prices. 

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  • Tags -

    You can use tags to find the listing with the search function easily. Examples could be anything from the listing’s location or nicknames. Nicknames in some management systems will be imported to PriceLabs. Read more here

  • Trends by booking creation date -

    These trends show trends based on the date a booking was made, overlaying it with various KPIs - RevPAR, Revenue, Average LOS, No. of Reservations, Average lead time, and Occupancy %.

  • Trends by stay date -

    These charts show trends by stay dates, which you can summarize by month, week, day, or day of the week to compare year-over-year metrics easily. 

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  • Vacation Rental Management Cost -

    Also, short-term management costs. Total expenses in managing a vacation rental property. The expenses that you may come across are: cleaning fee, maintenance costs, broadband costs, etc.

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  • Weekly discounts -

    You can use this customization to add weekly percentage discounts for your listings.

Revenue Estimator Pro: Get Instant Revenue Estimates for Any Address.

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