Glossary

Stands for “Average Daily Rate”, an important KPI in the hotel industry. It is, as you would imagine, the average rate charged for a night’s stay for a given period at a given property, or set of properties.

DMA stands for Designated Marketing Area. Research firm Nielsen divides the United States into 210 geographic regions or media markets. Initially designed to support targeted advertising via broadcast TV, these regions are often used for targeting via other media and for reporting purposes.

Though everyone has forgotten, ESTO stands for Educational Seminar for Tourism Organizations, and is better understood as the U.S. Travel Association’s annual convention for destination marketing professionals.

A FAM trip (short for familiarization), is a free or heavily discounted travel experience offered to travel agents, tour operators, influencers, meeting planners or media professionals. The goal is to familiarize them with the destination so they can better promote or sell it to their clients or audiences.

Fully Independent Traveler – anyone that books their own hotel rooms, flights, car rentals etc, rather than doing so through an agent or by purchasing a package holiday.

Organized by the U.S. Travel Association, IPW is the largest destination trade show in the United States, attracting travel buyers and journalists from around the world.

An important KPI in the hotel industry. Usually expressed as a percentage of rooms occupied for a given period at a given property, or set of properties.

Online Travel Agent, such as Expedia.

Point of Interest

A receptive operator (also known as a receptive tour operator or inbound tour operator) is a local travel company that specializes in handling the ground arrangements for travelers coming from other regions or countries.

Multiply ADR by Occupancy and you get the RevPAR, or “Revenue Per Available Room”, an important KPI in the hotel industry.

Search Engine Marketing. A euphemism for paying for placement on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), most commonly through the mechanism of Google Adwords.

Search Engine Optimization. The practice of tailoring a website for greater visibility on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) in order to garner more traffic.

Search Engine Results Page i.e. the page you are taken to after googling something.

Smith Travel and Research – a leading collector and supplier of hotel performance metrics.