ADR and RevPAR, Explained Simply: The Two Numbers That Tell You If You're Selling Well

Hoteliera Team · September 17, 2026

Revenue

ADR and RevPAR, Explained Simply: The Two Numbers That Tell You If You're Selling Well

You had a good month. The planner was full, the money came in. But was it a better month than last year? And if so, why: because you sold more nights, or because you sold them at a higher price?

Occupancy alone won’t tell you. A guesthouse at 90% with low prices can earn less than one at 70% with good prices. To see the difference you need two numbers that big hotels watch daily and small properties almost never do: ADR and RevPAR.

Nothing complicated. Two divisions.

ADR: what you earn per night sold

ADR stands for Average Daily Rate. It’s calculated like this:

ADR = lodging revenue ÷ room nights sold

Example: in August you earned 268,400 in lodging revenue and sold 763 room nights. ADR = 268,400 ÷ 763 = 352. That’s what you took, on average, for every night you actually sold.

What ADR tells you: how well you sell. It rises when you raise rates, sell more of the expensive rooms, or cut discounts. It falls when you sell a lot through promotions, or when cheap channels bring most of your bookings.

What it does not tell you: anything about the rooms left empty. You can have an excellent ADR with half the property unoccupied.

Two details that matter in the calculation:

Lodging only. Breakfast sold separately, extras and the minibar don’t count. Otherwise you compare apples with oranges from one month to the next.
Room nights, not reservations. A 3-night booking for 2 rooms is 6 room nights.

RevPAR: what every room produces, sold or not

RevPAR stands for Revenue per Available Room:

RevPAR = lodging revenue ÷ room nights available

Or, equivalently:

RevPAR = ADR × occupancy

Same August: 30 rooms × 31 days = 930 available nights. RevPAR = 268,400 ÷ 930 = 289. Check: 352 × 82% occupancy = 289.

The difference from ADR: RevPAR includes the empty rooms. It’s the number that combines price and occupancy into one figure and tells you whether your pricing strategy works overall, not just on the rooms you managed to sell.

If you track a single indicator, track this one.

How to read them together

The three numbers (ADR, occupancy, RevPAR) are read together, like a dashboard. Here are the combinations you’ll see most often:

ADR up, occupancy down. You’re selling at a higher price, but rooms stay empty. Either the price is above what the market accepts, or the competition moved. If RevPAR fell too, you pushed too hard.

ADR down, occupancy up. You sell a lot, but cheap. Demand is there; you probably have room to raise rates in busy periods, or to set a minimum stay so cheap one-night bookings don’t fragment your calendar.

RevPAR up versus last year. You earn more from the same rooms. The strategy works, whatever the other two did.

RevPAR down, occupancy unchanged. You gave discounts that didn’t bring extra nights. Those are the most expensive discounts there are.

The practical rule: occupancy tells you how many rooms you sold, ADR at what price, RevPAR how much it was worth overall.

What to compare against

A number on its own means nothing. An ADR of 352 is good or bad depending on:

the same period last year. The most useful comparison for a seasonal business. August against August, not August against March.
room type. A global ADR hides the fact that apartments sell under price and standard rooms over.
channel. Direct bookings usually have a better net ADR than OTA bookings once you subtract the commission. If not, something is off in your pricing.

For the occupancy side of the equation, see how to maximize your occupancy rate.

Where to find them in Hoteliera

You don’t have to calculate anything by hand. In Reports › ADR you pick the period and see, for every day, week, month or year:

available and booked nights, occupancy, revenue, ADR and RevPAR;
the same figures per room type or per channel, to see where the margin leaks;
the comparison with the same period last year, right in the table;
revenue gross or net of channel commission;
blocked, out-of-order or complimentary rooms excluded from the maths, so they don’t distort the average.

Future rows show separately, as on the books reservations: you see what next month looks like before it happens, not after.

See your ADR and RevPAR in seconds

Hoteliera calculates ADR, occupancy and RevPAR per day, month or year, per room type or channel, and compares them with last year. Already included, no setup.

Try Hoteliera for free → or request a demo →.