Tourism and AI glossary
Tourism business terms, from revenue and marketing to AI, explained in plain English. Each entry opens with a short definition, shows the term at work in tourism with a labeled example, and links the sources we checked.
Use the menu on the side to jump straight to a category or a letter, or scroll down if you would rather see where to begin. New entries join as they are published, each filed in its category and under its letter, so this page stays the one place to find every term we explain.
Start here
Not sure where to begin? Pick the line that sounds like you. Then follow the links.
Your rates change with the season or the day of the week
read yield management, then average daily rate (ADR).
You run rooms and want to know whether a month was really a good one
read RevPAR.
Guests book on your own website, or you want them to
read booking engine.
You are about to write an offer or a campaign
read customer segmentation.
Reviews and repeat stays keep your business going
read guest experience.
You want AI to read your reviews for you
read sentiment analysis.
Browse by category
Each entry sits in exactly one category, one for each part of the trade. A hotel revenue term goes under Revenue, a review-reading AI term under AI. A new category appears here when its first entry is published.
AI
AI and automation terms, explained for tourism.
Knowledge base
An answer card that tells staff when to reuse or pause
Sentiment analysis
Trace a review label back to its words and the next check
Voice search
Check spoken questions against your current business facts
Data
Data, measurement and tourism statistics terms.
Data quality
Check pickup fields and decide which instructions to hold
Marketing
Marketing, SEO and brand terms used in tourism.
Brand voice
Change the tone of a guest message while keeping its facts
Customer segmentation
A customer-group card with rules for missing and conflicting needs
Personalization
Turn a guest’s current request into a checked service choice
Sales
How travel is sold: channels, online travel agencies, distribution systems and sales terms.
Booking engine
What a booking engine does, and a test booking to run as a guest
Booking window
Separate lead time, calendar opening, and offer purchase dates
Fam trip
A stop card for the small business a fam trip visits
Revenue
Revenue management, pricing and performance metrics.
Average daily rate (ADR)
One card that makes your ADR comparable across periods and channels
GOPPAR
Fix which costs count, then read GOPPAR next to RevPAR
RevPAR
Tell whether rate or occupancy moved your RevPAR, and what it netted
Upselling
Four checks to run before you offer a guest an upgrade
Yield management
Check a group request before committing your busiest dates
Operations
Running the operation day to day: guests, staff, events and services.
Event planning
Answer a planner’s request, line by line, from purpose to final bill
Guest experience
The whole guest journey, from search to follow-up
Guest feedback
Sort what guests tell you into fix-now and fix-the-pattern
Guest satisfaction
How to report a satisfaction score so it means something
Preventive maintenance
A maintenance handoff card from due task to guest use
Property management system
Check room records and decide who enters exceptions
Run of show
Run an event day minute by minute, with fallbacks and guest messages
Service recovery
Who may fix what, and by when, when service fails a guest
Visitor experience
Read a visit by its signals while you are open, and act on them
Sustainability
Sustainable and responsible tourism, certification and impact.
Community-based tourism
Five checks before you sell a community-run experience
Responsible tourism
A practice register with owners, evidence and guest guidelines
Sustainable tourism
Match your sustainability claims to the evidence you hold
Triple bottom line
Build a people, planet, and profit scorecard for your business
A to Z
Every published entry in alphabetical order, with the same card you see in its category, for the moments when you already know the word and only need its meaning.
A
Average daily rate (ADR)
One card that makes your ADR comparable across periods and channels
B
Booking engine
What a booking engine does, and a test booking to run as a guest
Booking window
Separate lead time, calendar opening, and offer purchase dates
Brand voice
Change the tone of a guest message while keeping its facts
C
Community-based tourism
Five checks before you sell a community-run experience
Customer segmentation
A customer-group card with rules for missing and conflicting needs
D
Data quality
Check pickup fields and decide which instructions to hold
E
Event planning
Answer a planner’s request, line by line, from purpose to final bill
F
Fam trip
A stop card for the small business a fam trip visits
G
GOPPAR
Fix which costs count, then read GOPPAR next to RevPAR
Guest experience
The whole guest journey, from search to follow-up
Guest feedback
Sort what guests tell you into fix-now and fix-the-pattern
Guest satisfaction
How to report a satisfaction score so it means something
K
Knowledge base
An answer card that tells staff when to reuse or pause
P
Personalization
Turn a guest’s current request into a checked service choice
Preventive maintenance
A maintenance handoff card from due task to guest use
Property management system
Check room records and decide who enters exceptions
R
Responsible tourism
A practice register with owners, evidence and guest guidelines
RevPAR
Tell whether rate or occupancy moved your RevPAR, and what it netted
Run of show
Run an event day minute by minute, with fallbacks and guest messages
S
Sentiment analysis
Trace a review label back to its words and the next check
Service recovery
Who may fix what, and by when, when service fails a guest
Sustainable tourism
Match your sustainability claims to the evidence you hold
T
Triple bottom line
Build a people, planet, and profit scorecard for your business
U
Upselling
Four checks to run before you offer a guest an upgrade
V
Visitor experience
Read a visit by its signals while you are open, and act on them
Voice search
Check spoken questions against your current business facts
Y
Yield management
Check a group request before committing your busiest dates
Terms people mix up
Two terms that sound alike can lead to two very different decisions, such as cutting a price when the real problem was how the rooms were sold. Each pair links to both entries.
Average daily rate (ADR) or RevPAR? Average daily rate is room revenue per room sold, so it shows price only. RevPAR divides room revenue by every room available, sold or not, so it shows price and occupancy together.
Guest experience or guest satisfaction? Guest experience is the whole journey, from the first search to follow-up. Guest satisfaction is the result: how well the stay, tour or visit met what the guest expected.
Guest feedback or guest satisfaction? Guest feedback is what guests tell you in reviews, surveys and messages. Guest satisfaction is the score you read from some of that feedback.
Sustainable tourism or responsible tourism? Sustainable tourism is the goal: tourism that weighs its present and future effects on people, the environment and livelihoods. Responsible tourism is about who acts: the people involved take responsibility for those effects.
How every entry is written
Every entry follows the same shape, so you always know where to look. Same order, every time. The definition comes first and names the wider category the term belongs to. Then you see where the term shows up in tourism work, how it differs from the terms people confuse it with, and a worked example labeled as illustrative.
Each entry ends with first steps, real questions and their answers, related terms and the sources. The Travel Tech Digital editorial team writes them with AI assistance, and every fact is checked against a linked source before the entry goes live. Nothing is guessed. Practice advice reads as advice, never as a rule.
Prefer one longer read on AI? See our AI glossary for tourism, fifty AI terms in one article.
Put AI to work in your tourism business
