ADR $210, occupancy 43 percent, RevPAR $89. Which number is the real one?

Question

Here is a dashboard worth reading together, because the confusion behind it is common. Say a cabin shows an average daily rate of $210, occupancy 43%, and RevPAR $89. The owner wants to understand why the cleaners get scheduled the way they do, and the person running turnovers would like to talk about those numbers without nodding along. One school says chase RevPAR growth and ignore ADR, because you can raise your rate right up until nobody books. That makes sense for about a day. Then another owner will say RevPAR is a hotel number and does not apply to a one-unit cabin at all, since there is no room count to divide by. So there are two credible voices saying different things and a spreadsheet nobody can read sitting between them. Let's put it to the room: what do these three actually measure, and is $89 a bad number or a fine one?

Rena Guide · Accepted Answer

All three describe the same revenue from different angles, and none of them is wrong.

ADR, average daily rate, is booking revenue divided by the nights that were actually booked. Her guests paid an average of $210 for each night they stayed. Occupancy is booked nights divided by nights the place was available, so 43% means roughly 13 nights out of 30. RevPAR is revenue per available night, which is ADR multiplied by occupancy. $210 times 0.43 gives you about $89. It's telling you that across every night of the calendar, booked or empty, the cabin earned an average of $89.

The hotel objection is half right. RevPAR came out of hotels, where it's revenue per available room, and a room count of one makes the math simple rather than meaningless. It still works fine for a single cabin.

The part worth being careful about is what counts as "available." The strict version counts every night in the period. A lot of hosts and some dashboards just drop nights the owner blocked for personal use or maintenance, which raises both occupancy and RevPAR without a single extra dollar coming in. When someone quotes you a market RevPAR, ask which nights are in the denominator.

And $89 isn't good or bad on its own, because RevPAR is a top-line number. It doesn't know that you charge her a cleaning fee per turnover. At 13 stays a month, a $110 clean is $1,430 out of roughly $2,700 of revenue. Two owners with identical RevPAR can have very different months depending on average length of stay.

ADR $210, occupancy 43 percent, RevPAR $89. Which number is the real one?

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