The Short-Term Rental Marketing Glossary: ADR, RevPAR, AEO, and the

Thomas Garner
Aug 19
12 min read

Updated: 5 days ago

Snow-covered log cabin with wraparound deck, no people

Short-term rental marketing pulls its vocabulary from several different fields at once: hospitality revenue management, traditional digital marketing, and increasingly, AI and search technology. That means a host can sit through three vendor calls in the same week and hear three different flavors of jargon, none of it defined, all of it presented as if everyone in the room already knows what it means.

This glossary exists to close that gap. It defines the terms that actually come up in host-facing marketing conversations, in plain language, without pretending any of them are more complicated than they need to be. Where a term has a formal industry definition - the kind a revenue manager or an analytics platform actually publishes - this glossary uses that definition rather than a looser paraphrase, so a host has the same footing as whoever is using the term across the table.

None of these definitions promise a specific outcome for any one property. A term like conversion rate describes a concept, not a guarantee, and knowing what ADR means doesn't by itself tell a host what their ADR should be. Use this as a reference for understanding what someone means when they use these words, and as a way to test whether a vendor's pitch is actually using them correctly - not as a promise about what applying any of them will do for a specific listing's bookings. This is not legal advice.

Revenue and Pricing Terms

ADR, or average daily rate, is the average nightly rate actually collected across booked nights in a given period. It's a useful benchmark for comparing pricing over time, though it says nothing about occupancy on its own - a property could raise its ADR while its occupancy quietly collapses, and the ADR number alone would never reveal that. The hospitality data firm STR (CoStar) defines Average Daily Rate formally as a measure of the average rate paid for rooms sold, calculated as room revenue divided by rooms sold. That's the calculation behind the shorthand: total revenue collected, divided by the number of nights that actually sold.

Occupancy rate is the percentage of available nights actually booked in a given period. STR defines it the same way at the industry level: the percentage of available rooms sold during a specified period, calculated as rooms sold divided by rooms available. A property can have a high ADR and low occupancy, or the reverse, which is why the two numbers are almost always discussed together rather than in isolation - a host quoted only one of them is getting half the picture.

RevPAR, or revenue per available room (or per available unit for a single-property host), combines ADR and occupancy into one figure. STR defines RevPAR as total room revenue divided by the total number of available rooms, which is mathematically the same as ADR multiplied by occupancy. RevPAR gives a more complete picture of revenue performance than either number alone, which is exactly why it's useful for comparing performance across different pricing strategies - two properties can land on the same RevPAR through very different combinations of rate and occupancy, and the RevPAR figure is what lets you compare them on equal footing.

Benchmarking Terms Borrowed From Hotel Revenue Management

Some of the vocabulary that shows up in STR marketing conversations wasn't built for short-term rentals at all - it was built for hotel revenue management and has migrated over because the underlying math is the same. Occupancy index, sometimes shortened to MPI, is one of these. STR defines its occupancy index as a measure of a property's occupancy relative to an aggregated grouping such as a competitive set, a market, or a submarket, with a score of 100 historically described as fair share - meaning the property is performing exactly in line with the group it's being measured against.

RevPAR index, also called Revenue Generating Index or RGI, works the same way but for RevPAR instead of occupancy: it measures a property's RevPAR relative to an aggregated grouping of comparable properties, again with 100 described as fair share if all things are equal. A score above 100 means a property is outperforming its comparison group on revenue per available unit; a score below 100 means it's underperforming that group.

A host doesn't need to build their own competitive-set index to get value from understanding this vocabulary. The useful part is recognizing what a vendor means when they reference a benchmark, an index, or a fair-share comparison - it's a relative measure against a defined group, not an absolute claim about what any specific property should be earning. If a vendor cites an index number without naming what group it's measured against, that's a gap worth asking about directly, since the index number is meaningless without knowing the comparison set behind it.

Booking Funnel and Conversion Terms

Conversion rate describes the percentage of people who view a listing and actually complete a booking. It's a core metric for judging whether a listing's presentation - the photos, the description, the pricing as displayed - is effectively turning interest into confirmed reservations, as opposed to generating views that go nowhere.

Click-through rate describes something earlier in the same funnel: the percentage of people who see a listing in a search result or an ad and click through to actually view it. It's a different, earlier-stage metric than conversion, measuring initial interest rather than the final booking decision. A listing can have a strong click-through rate and a weak conversion rate, which usually points to a mismatch between what the search result or ad promised and what the listing itself delivers once someone actually lands on it.

Understanding the difference between these two terms matters most when a vendor reports results using only one of them. A pitch built entirely around click-through numbers, with no mention of what happened after the click, is describing traffic - not bookings. A host evaluating any marketing effort should ask which stage of the funnel a reported number actually describes before treating it as evidence the effort is working.

Content and Writing Terms

Fact density describes how much specific, verifiable, useful information a piece of content contains relative to its length. A listing description padded with generic language has low fact density even if it's grammatically polished and pleasant to read - length and polish are not the same thing as substance, and a guest scanning a description is looking for the substance.

House-forward or host-forward voice describes writing that centers the specific, personal, place-based detail of an actual host and property, as opposed to generic template language that could describe many similar listings interchangeably. It's the writing equivalent of high fact density: specific rather than swappable.

Hero photo refers to the primary, first-seen image representing a listing - typically the single most important photo for capturing initial guest interest before a viewer scrolls into the rest of the gallery. Vendors sometimes use the term as if it's a technical setting rather than what it actually is: a plain description of whichever photo happens to load first and therefore carries the most weight in a guest's first impression.

Website and Analytics Terms

When a marketing vendor references analytics performance, the terms usually trace back to Google Analytics 4's own definitions, and it's worth knowing what those specific words mean rather than accepting a vendor's looser gloss on them. GA4 defines an engaged session as a session that lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a key event, or has two or more screen or page views. That's a precise, three-part test - a session only needs to satisfy one of the three conditions to count as engaged, not all three.

Engagement rate, in GA4's own terms, is the percentage of sessions that were engaged sessions under that same definition. Bounce rate is effectively its inverse: the percentage of sessions that were not engaged. A host being shown a bounce-rate number should understand that a session lasting nine seconds with only one page view counts as a bounce under this definition, while a ten-second-plus session with two page views does not - a distinction that can make a modest, easily explainable design choice look like a dramatic swing in either direction.

This matters for a specific practical reason: GA4's own definition means a website with only one page (a single landing page a guest either books from or leaves) will show a 100% bounce rate for any session that isn't engaged by GA4's own rule, regardless of how well that single page is actually performing. A vendor citing bounce rate on a one-page site without acknowledging that mechanical fact is either misunderstanding the metric or hoping the host doesn't ask.

Reputation and Social Proof Terms

Review velocity describes how frequently new reviews are being added to a listing over time - a distinct measure from the total review count, and one that's relevant to how current and active a listing appears to a prospective guest. A listing with two hundred reviews from three years ago and none since reads very differently to a guest than a listing with fifty reviews, ten of them from the past month.

Social proof refers broadly to any external validation of a listing's quality - reviews, press mentions, guest photos - that a prospective guest can use to judge trustworthiness beyond the host's own description of the property. The term covers a category of evidence rather than any single specific tactic, which is why a vendor pitching "social proof" without naming what specific form it takes (reviews, a press mention, user-generated photos) is describing a category, not a plan.

Distinguishing review velocity from raw review count, and distinguishing social proof as a category from any one specific tactic, gives a host a clearer way to evaluate what a vendor is actually proposing to build or measure, rather than nodding along to a term that sounds substantive without committing to anything specific.

Advertising and Targeting Terms

Retargeting refers to showing ads specifically to people who previously viewed a listing but didn't book, based on tracking their prior visit. It's a targeted advertising technique distinct from broad-audience promotion, which shows ads to a wide, undifferentiated audience regardless of whether they've ever interacted with the listing before.

The distinction matters because the two techniques answer different questions. Broad-audience promotion is trying to generate new interest from people who've never seen the listing. Retargeting is trying to recover interest from people who already looked and, for whatever reason, didn't convert. A vendor proposing an advertising strategy should be able to say which of the two they mean, and a strategy that blurs the two together without distinguishing them is harder to evaluate for whether it's actually reaching new prospects or just re-showing ads to the same small pool of past visitors.

Vanity metrics describes numbers that look impressive - follower counts, raw impressions - without necessarily correlating to actual booking outcomes. The term is worth knowing specifically because it's the natural counterpart to conversion rate and direct bookings: metrics that tie more directly to revenue. A report built primarily around vanity metrics, with no line connecting them to bookings or revenue, is telling a host what happened without telling them whether it mattered.

Terms Worth Knowing to Spot Overpromising

Guaranteed ranking or guaranteed placement are terms no legitimate SEO or AEO provider can honestly promise. Neither traditional search engines nor AI systems publish or commit to a fixed placement formula that any outside party can guarantee against, which means a vendor offering a guaranteed ranking is either misunderstanding how these systems work or making a claim they can't actually back up.

AEO, or answer-engine optimization, refers to structuring content specifically so an AI assistant can use it directly to construct an answer, as distinct from optimizing purely for a clickable ranked search result. Citation, in that same context, refers to an AI assistant naming or linking a specific source when generating a response - a visibility outcome increasingly discussed alongside, or instead of, a traditional search ranking. Schema markup is the code embedded in a webpage that explicitly labels content's meaning (this is a review, this is an FAQ answer), making it easier for both search engines and AI systems to parse the content accurately.

Organic reach or organic visibility refers to unpaid, algorithm-driven visibility, as distinct from paid placement. Understanding that distinction is what actually helps a host evaluate whether a vendor's pitch is describing paid promotion, unpaid strategy, or quietly blurring the two together in a single number. A host who can name these terms accurately is in a much stronger position to ask a vendor a specific, pointed follow-up question - and to notice when the answer doesn't actually address what was asked.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between ADR and RevPAR?

ADR (average daily rate) is the average nightly rate actually collected across booked nights - room revenue divided by rooms sold, in STR's formal definition. RevPAR combines ADR with occupancy into a single figure (total room revenue divided by total available rooms, equivalent to ADR multiplied by occupancy), giving a fuller picture of revenue performance than rate alone, since a high ADR with low occupancy tells an incomplete story on its own.

What does an occupancy index or MPI score of 100 actually mean?

STR describes 100 as fair share: the property is performing exactly in line with whatever competitive set, market, or submarket it's being measured against. A score above 100 means outperforming that group; below 100 means underperforming it. The number is only meaningful alongside a clear statement of what group it's being compared to.

What does fact density mean in the context of listing copy?

It describes how much specific, verifiable, useful information a piece of content contains relative to its length. A description can be long and grammatically polished while still having low fact density if it's built from generic language rather than specific, checkable details about the actual property.

What's the difference between conversion rate and click-through rate?

Click-through rate measures how many people click through from a search result or ad to view a listing - an earlier-stage interest signal. Conversion rate measures how many of those viewers actually complete a booking. A listing can have strong click-through and weak conversion, which usually points to a mismatch between what the ad or search result promised and what the listing delivers.

What is an engaged session in Google Analytics 4?

GA4 defines it as a session that lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a key event, or has two or more screen or page views - only one of those three conditions needs to be met. Engagement rate is the percentage of sessions that were engaged; bounce rate is the percentage that were not.

Why can bounce rate look misleadingly high on a one-page website?

Because GA4's engaged-session definition requires a session to clear one of three thresholds (10+ seconds, a key event, or 2+ page views) to avoid counting as a bounce. A single-page site has no second page to view, so any short, event-free visit counts as a bounce even if the visitor read the whole page and then booked by phone or left to check dates elsewhere.

What's the difference between review velocity and total review count?

Total review count is the cumulative number of reviews a listing has ever received. Review velocity describes how frequently new reviews are being added over time, which is a separate signal of how current and active a listing looks to a prospective guest - a listing can have many old reviews and very low current velocity.

What are vanity metrics, and why does the term matter?

Vanity metrics are numbers that look impressive - follower counts, raw impressions - without necessarily correlating to actual booking outcomes. The term matters because it names the gap between activity and results, and a report built mostly around vanity metrics with no connection to bookings or revenue isn't actually showing whether the work mattered.

Can a vendor legitimately guarantee a ranking or AI citation?

No. Neither traditional search engines nor AI systems publish or commit to a fixed placement formula any outside party can guarantee. A vendor offering guaranteed ranking or guaranteed placement is either misunderstanding how these systems function or making a claim they cannot actually deliver on.

What's the difference between retargeting and broad-audience advertising?

Retargeting shows ads specifically to people who already viewed a listing but didn't book, based on tracking their prior visit. Broad-audience promotion shows ads to a wide, undifferentiated audience regardless of prior interaction. The two answer different questions - recovering past interest versus generating new interest - and a strategy should be able to say which one it's actually doing.

What is schema markup, in plain terms?

It's code embedded in a webpage that explicitly labels what a piece of content actually is - this is a review, this is an FAQ answer - so both search engines and AI systems can parse the content's meaning accurately rather than guessing at it from surrounding text.

Work with Crest & Cove Creative

Three vendors, three vocabularies, one host left nodding along - this glossary is what closes that gap before the next sales call. Name the failure mode the guest can check on the listing.

Bookmark this page for the next time a vendor drops a term without defining it, and if you'd rather have someone translate a specific pitch you've already received, Crest & Cove Creative can look at it with you. Name the failure mode the guest can check on the listing.

Reach out at crestcove.co or (256) 998-7502.