Best available rate (BAR): what it is and how to set it

EHL Hospitality Business School describes it as the lowest price open to the public for a given date, used as an anchor: member prices, package prices and negotiated company prices are usually built from it.

Many hotels take BAR to be the price of their flexible rate, with free cancellation, so that a non-refundable price can sit below it. Booking.com suggests most properties start with two rate plans, one fully flexible and one non-refundable, and on such a hotel the flexible price is the natural BAR. Whatever you choose, write it down and keep to it.

• A non-refundable price, below BAR. Booking.com says that with a non-refundable rate the guest pays the full price if they cancel, change or don't show up.
• Member prices on the booking sites, below BAR, for the programmes you join.
• Packages, above BAR: breakfast, dinner, a transfer or a spa treatment added.
• Company and travel agent prices, set as a share off BAR, so they move with it.
• Long-stay prices, such as weekly prices, below BAR for each night.

Set each one as a rule from BAR rather than a price of its own, and you change one price each night instead of ten.

1. 1Start from what the night was worth last year: the same day of the week in the same season, and how fast it sold.
2. 2Check how busy your town will be: festivals, weddings, holidays, events and long weekends.
3. 3Check what the hotels around you charge for that night, for a similar room on similar terms.
4. 4Set the price, then let your other prices follow it: the non-refundable price below it, packages above it.
5. 5Look again as the night comes closer. Raise it if rooms sell fast, and check the hotels around you before you lower it.

• The rack rate is a fixed, published ceiling. BAR moves with every night: well below the rack rate on a quiet night, and up to it on the busiest.
• Your average room rate is what the rooms you sold really brought in, after every discount and member price. It sits below your BARs, by as much as your discounts took off.
• Dynamic pricing is the habit of moving BAR with demand; revenue management is the wider work of deciding it, its conditions and where to sell it.

Guests compare. If your BAR on a booking site is lower than on your own website, the guest books on the site and you pay its commission. Send the same BAR to every site, through your channel manager if you have one, and then check what each site shows.

The price a guest sees can be lower than the one you sent, because of programmes and deals you joined. Booking.com, for one, tells hotels whose prices differ between the extranet and their channel manager to check first whether a deal on that rate is the cause.