Revenue Management
BAR — Best Available Rate
The lowest unrestricted public rate offered for a given date.
Academic definition
Best Available Rate (BAR) is the lowest unrestricted, publicly available rate a hotel offers for a given date. "Unrestricted" means it carries no advance-purchase, length-of-stay, or non-refundable conditions, so any guest can book it. BAR functions as the reference rate around which a hotel's pricing structure is built: discounted segments and negotiated corporate rates are often expressed relative to it, and it is the rate typically displayed across public channels. Under dynamic pricing, BAR is not a single figure but moves daily or intraday with demand, often managed through rate tiers or a BAR-by-day-of-arrival logic. Maintaining a consistent BAR across channels is central to rate parity. Because it is the headline public rate, BAR shapes price perception and competitive comparison, though it reflects the gross rate offered rather than the net rate retained after distribution and acquisition costs.
Worked example
A hotel sets a BAR of ₹4,500 for a Friday and lists it everywhere; the booking that arrives direct keeps the full rate, while the identical BAR booked via OTA quietly returns ₹810 less in commission.
The ProfitPAR™ lens
BAR is the number the market sees, which makes it the number hotels obsess over and the number that hides the most. Two properties can publish an identical BAR and retain wildly different amounts, because BAR says nothing about which channel delivers the booking or what it costs to service. Worse, a single public BAR pushed equally across direct and OTA channels means the hotel pays a heavy commission to sell at the same price it could have sold commission-free. ProfitPAR™ treats BAR as a starting point, not a destination: the goal is to steer demand toward the channels where that same BAR retains the most, so the headline rate and the kept rate stop being strangers.
The same best available rate keeps very different amounts depending on who delivered the booking.
Measure what each room actually keeps.
ProfitPAR is offered as a private revenue practice, by invitation. Tell us about your hotel to begin.
Request an InvitationWorked examples use illustrative figures in Indian Rupee (₹) with lakh/crore conventions. They are composite and representative, not drawn from any single property. ProfitPAR™ is a trademark of Sibasish Misra.