Host glossary

The words hosts, booking sites and pricing tools use, in plain language, with an example where it helps.

ADR (average daily rate): What you earned per booked night: your accommodation revenue divided by the nights you sold. Sold 10 nights for ֏300,000 in total? Your ADR is ֏30,000. Cleaning and other fees are usually left out, so you can compare like with like.
Cancellation policy: Your rules for what a guest gets back if they cancel, and until when. Flexible policies win more bookings; strict ones protect busy dates. Many hosts use a stricter policy for peak season.
Channel manager: Software that keeps your availability, prices and bookings the same on every site you sell on. Without one, a booking on one site has to be blocked by hand everywhere else, and double bookings creep in.
Commission: The share of a booking's value that a platform keeps for bringing you the guest.
Direct booking: A booking a guest makes with you on your own channel, without an OTA in between taking a commission.
Dynamic pricing: Prices that move with demand: season, day of the week, local events and how far ahead the guest books. A big concert in Yerevan or a holiday weekend is the classic case for a higher price and a longer minimum stay.
Guest journey: Every step a guest goes through with you, from finding your listing and booking to arriving, staying, leaving and reviewing.
House rules: What guests agree to when they book: quiet hours, smoking, parties, pets, the number of guests.
iCal sync: A calendar link that copies booked dates from one site to another. It blocks dates but doesn't carry prices or guest details. Sites refresh these links on their own schedule, sometimes only every few hours, so a short gap for double bookings remains.
Instant book: Guests book and pay straight away, without waiting for you to accept. The opposite is request to book.
Lead time: The days between the moment a guest books and the day they arrive. If most guests book three weeks ahead, a price change for next month still has time to work. A change for tomorrow mostly doesn't.
Length of stay (LOS): How many nights a booking lasts. The average tells you how often you turn the place over.
Minimum stay: The fewest nights a guest can book. Hosts raise it for busy dates and lower it to fill gaps.
Occupancy rate: The share of nights you could sell that were actually booked. 21 booked nights out of 30 available is 70% occupancy. Nights you blocked for yourself don't count as available.
Orphan nights: Short gaps between bookings that are too short to sell under your minimum stay. Lowering the minimum stay for just those dates, or a small discount, often fills them.
OTA (online travel agency): A booking site that sells stays and trips for many providers and takes a commission, such as Booking.com, Airbnb or Expedia.
Peak, low and shoulder season: The busiest months, the quietest ones, and the months in between, when demand is building or easing.
Rate parity: Offering the same price for the same stay on every channel. Some OTA contracts ask for it.
Request to book: The guest asks for the dates and you accept or decline before the booking is confirmed.
RevPAR (revenue per available room): Accommodation revenue divided by every night you could have sold, booked or not. It equals ADR × occupancy. It shows whether a higher price or a fuller calendar is really earning you more. ֏30,000 ADR at 70% occupancy gives a RevPAR of ֏21,000.
Security deposit: Money held or taken before a stay and given back after it if nothing is damaged.
Self check-in: Guests let themselves in with a key box, smart lock or door code, so nobody has to meet them.
Turnover: The cleaning and reset between one guest checking out and the next checking in. Same-day turnovers leave only the hours between check-out and check-in, so a reliable cleaner matters most here.