Revenue Management
CTA — Closed to Arrival
A restriction blocking new arrivals on a date while allowing stay-throughs to continue.
Academic definition
Closed to Arrival (CTA) is an inventory restriction that prevents new guests from beginning a stay on a specified date, while still permitting guests already in-house to stay through that night. It is used to protect a high-demand date by reserving its inventory for multi-night bookings that arrive earlier, encouraging longer stays that span the peak rather than single-night arrivals that would consume rooms on the most valuable night alone. CTA is frequently paired with minimum length of stay and closed to departure to orchestrate how demand fills a cluster of dates around a peak. Because it restricts only arrivals and not occupancy, it shapes the pattern of bookings without simply closing the date. Applied carelessly it can suppress otherwise profitable demand, so it is set against forecast demand and pace for the date and its neighbours.
Worked example
On a sold-out concert Friday, a hotel sets CTA so no new one-night arrivals can book Friday, reserving those rooms for guests arriving Thursday on two-night stays who span the peak.
The ProfitPAR™ lens
CTA is a scalpel, not a hammer — it does not close the hotel, it closes the door to a particular shape of booking. Its profit logic is the same as MLOS read from the other side: keep the peak night for guests who are already in-house, paying for several nights against a single acquisition cost, rather than letting a fresh one-night arrival burn a commission to occupy the most valuable room of the period. ProfitPAR™ values CTA because the stay-through guest it protects is structurally cheaper to serve than the new arrival it turns away. Used to favour longer, already-acquired stays over costly single-night pickups, it tilts the mix toward profit.
Protecting a peak night for stay-throughs favours the guest you have already paid to acquire.
Measure what each room actually keeps.
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