# The acronym fluency test: KPIs every professional must know
A general manager walks into a Monday ops meeting and says: "RevPAR is up 4%, but GOPPAR is flat because CPOR jumped and our LOS shortened." Half the room nods. The other half is quietly Googling under the table. This lesson makes sure you're never in the second group.
Hotels run on a dense vocabulary of acronyms because a hotel P&L (profit and loss statement) has more moving parts than almost any other real estate asset: rooms, food and beverage, spa, meetings space, distribution costs, labor. The acronyms exist to compress that complexity into numbers you can compare across properties, brands, and countries.
ADR (Average Daily Rate): total room revenue divided by rooms sold. If a hotel sells 100 rooms for a combined $18,000 in one night, ADR is $180.
Occupancy: rooms sold divided by rooms available. Sell 100 of 150 available rooms and occupancy is 66.7%.
RevPAR (Revenue Per Available Room): the industry's single most-watched number. Formula: ADR × Occupancy, or equivalently, total room revenue divided by rooms available (not just rooms sold). Using the example above: $180 × 66.7% = $120 RevPAR.
Why RevPAR matters more than ADR alone: a hotel could raise ADR by turning away discount guests, but if occupancy collapses, revenue per room still falls. RevPAR forces both levers into one view. It's the number you'll see in every STR report (more on that below) and every quarterly earnings call from Marriott, Hilton, or Accor.
TRevPAR (Total Revenue Per Available Room): RevPAR only counts rooms. TRevPAR adds everything else, food and beverage, spa, parking, meeting space, divided by available rooms. A resort with mediocre RevPAR but a thriving beach club and wedding business can still post strong TRevPAR. This metric matters more each year as hotels chase non-room revenue.
Revenue metrics don't tell you if the hotel actually makes money. That's where cost enters.
GOPPAR (Gross Operating Profit Per Available Room): gross operating profit (revenue minus departmental and undistributed operating expenses, before rent, taxes, insurance, depreciation) divided by available rooms. It's the closest thing hospitality has to an operating-margin-per-unit metric. Two hotels with identical RevPAR can have very different GOPPAR if one has bloated payroll or energy costs.
CPOR (Cost Per Occupied Room): total operating cost (housekeeping, amenities, utilities tied to guest stays) divided by rooms actually sold. This is the metric labor-cost conversations revolve around. If CPOR is rising faster than ADR, margins are being squeezed even while headline revenue looks healthy, exactly the scenario in the opening scene.
Worked example:
A 200-room hotel, one night:
This is the exact chain a revenue manager and a GMGMGross margin is the share of revenue left after subtracting the direct cost of producing goods or services, expressed as a percentage of revenue.View full definition → (general manager) walk through daily.
LOS (Length of Stay): average number of nights per booking. Shorter LOS (common in business-heavy urban hotels) means more turnover cost (cleaning, check-in labor) per revenue dollar. Resorts prize longer LOS because it dilutes fixed costs like reception staffing.
STR reports: STR (originally "Smith Travel Research," now part of CoStar Group) is the benchmarking service almost every hotel subscribes to. Hotels submit their own RevPAR, ADR, and occupancy anonymously and receive back a "comp set" report showing how they perform against a defined group of competitors. When an owner asks "are we gaining or losing market sharemarket shareThe percentage of total industry sales your company captures in a given period. It measures competitive position relative to rivals in a defined market.View full definition →," the answer comes from STR's RevPAR index (your RevPAR divided by the comp set's average RevPAR, times 100). An index above 100 means you're outperforming your direct competitors.
Other acronyms you'll hear in the same meetings:
To use these acronyms fluently you need scale in your head.
For live, free benchmark data, STR's public insights page and the AHLA's state of the industry reports are the standard starting points professionals actually use.
Knowledge check
1. Why is RevPAR considered a more reliable performance indicator than ADR alone?
2. A resort has mediocre RevPAR but a highly profitable beach club and wedding business. Which metric would best capture this property's overall commercial performance?
3. Two hotels have identical occupancy rates, but Hotel A has a higher ADR than Hotel B. What can you conclude about their RevPAR?
4. Select ALL correct answers about why hotels rely heavily on standardized acronyms and KPIs.
Select all the correct answers.
5. Select ALL correct answers about the relationship between RevPAR and TRevPAR.
Select all the correct answers.
If you're evaluating a hotel investment, a management contract, or just prepping for that Monday meeting, run these checks:
1. RevPAR index trend, not just level. A hotel with RevPAR index falling from 110 to 95 over two years is losing competitive ground even if absolute RevPAR is rising with the market.
2. GOPPAR margin, not just GOPPAR level. Compare GOPPAR to TRevPAR as a ratio. A shrinking margin flags cost discipline problems, often payroll or utilities.
3. CPOR versus ADR growth. If CPOR grows faster than ADR for multiple quarters, pricing power isn't offsetting cost inflation, a red flag in labor-tight markets like the US and UK.
4. Channel mix. What share of bookings comes through OTAs versus direct? Heavy OTA dependence erodes margin through commissions even when RevPAR looks strong.
5. LOS by segment. A shift from long-stay leisure to short-stay corporate (or vice versa) changes housekeeping cost structure and should show up in CPOR.
🎬 [VIDEO: "Hotel Revenue Management Explained" - youtube.com/results?search_query=hotel+revenue+management+explained - search for current explainer videos from STR, Cornell's Hotel School, or HSMAI covering RevPAR, ADR, and revenue management fundamentals]