Pearson New International Edition International pcl tp indd 1

FRONT OFFICE SEMANTICS
Length of stay (LOS):
Number of nights a hotel’s individual guests use their rooms. LOS is computed on
a per-stay basis. For example, in a hotel that sold 300 group room nights to 100 guests, the LOS would be
computed as
Recall that RevPar is affected by both the rate at which rooms are sold and by
the number of rooms sold. Revenue managers who devise strategies to encourage
increased LOS will positively affect their property’s RevPar. For example, in 
Figure 1 note that Noel’s hotel achieved significantly higher occupancy levels than
JeAnna’s hotel on the day before and the day after the meeting. Revenue managers
can encourage meeting attendees to increase their LOS by offering special discounts
for arriving one day before staying one day after the meeting. This is especially true
for properties located in leisure and resort areas where attendees may have a reason
to extend their stay. Promotions such as “stay four nights; get the fifth night free” or
“come early; stay late” are examples of programs designed to increase LOS and the
property’s RevPar.
The average LOS is important to any leisure or business hotel. Operationally, as
LOS increases, housekeeping costs decrease, because the time and material costs