Accommodation

From a commercial and technological point of view, accommodation in travel and tourism is usually classified into two different categories depending on the structure of the inventory.

Traditional Accommodation (Hotels)

This category contains hotels, motels, and resorts. The defining characteristic is Room Type inventory. A hotel sells a category (e.g., Standard Double Room). The inventory is homogenous; Room 201 is exactly like Room 202. This offers the advantage of simplified distribution (selling 50 Standard Rooms via an OTA).

Alternative Accommodation (STR)

This category includes Short-Term Rentals (STRs), vacation homes (Airbnb/Vrbo), and villas. The defining characteristic is Unit-Based inventory. The supplier is selling an individual physical unit (e.g., Sunset Villa on 5th Street). The inventory is one-of-a-kind; no two listings are exactly alike. This requires complex technology to manage as quantity is always only one.

Managing these two kinds of accommodation needs different software stacks.

• Hotels depend upon a PMS (Property Management System) such as Oracle Opera or Cloudbeds. These systems emphasize operational efficiency, housekeeping cycles, and high-volume guest processing.
• Vacation rentals use channel managers or other specific software, such as Guesty or Hostaway. These systems are focused on multi-calendar views to avoid double bookings across different platforms (e.g., a house booked on Airbnb will be blocked on Vrbo) and often feature automation of things like keyless entry codes and guest vetting.

Irrespective of the type, accommodation providers use some standard metrics to measure success:

• Occupancy Rate: The percentage of the rooms/units sold.
• ADR (Average Daily Rate): Average amount of rental income per paid occupied room.
• RevPAR (Revenue Per Available Room): The gold standard metric that is calculated by multiplying ADR by the Occupancy Rate. It measures the property’s capacity to fill up rooms at an optimal price.