# What is RevPAR? Formula, examples and how it differs from ADR

> RevPAR is room revenue spread over every room you had, sold or empty. Here is the formula, how it differs from ADR, what a good RevPAR looks like and a worked 20-room month in ₹.

- URL: https://guesthawk.com/guides/revpar
- Category: Revenue
- Tags: Revenue management, Pricing
- Published: 11 November 2026
- Updated: 11 November 2026
- Publisher: GuestHawk (https://guesthawk.com)

Two hotels on the same road both had a "good month". One ran at 80 per cent full. The other ran at 65 per cent but charged more. Which one did better? Occupancy alone cannot say, and neither can rate alone. **What is RevPAR** for, then? It is the one number that answers that question: revenue per available room, the room revenue you earned spread over every room you had, whether you sold it or not. This guide gives the formula, shows how it differs from ADR, explains what a good RevPAR looks like, and works through the same 20-room hotel used in our guides to occupancy and ADR.

## What is RevPAR?

RevPAR is short for **revenue per available room**. It measures how much room revenue each room in your hotel earned over a period, counting the empty ones.

> **The RevPAR formula**
>
> RevPAR = room revenue ÷ rooms available

Because rooms available is the same count used for occupancy, RevPAR can also be worked out from the other two numbers:

> **The shortcut**
>
> RevPAR = occupancy × ADR

The three numbers, with the counting used across this series:

- **Occupancy rate** = rooms sold ÷ rooms available × 100. See the [occupancy rate formula](https://guesthawk.com/guides/hotel-occupancy-rate).
- **ADR (average daily rate)** = room revenue ÷ rooms sold. See [ADR in hotel reports](https://guesthawk.com/guides/adr-in-hotel).
- **RevPAR** = room revenue ÷ rooms available.

Room revenue is the room charge after discounts and **before GST**, with meal values in package rates taken out. Rooms sold means paid room-nights only: **complimentary rooms are excluded** from occupancy, ADR and RevPAR alike. Rooms available is every room × every night you were open for sale. The ADR guide sets out exactly what goes into room revenue.

## The RevPAR formula, worked through

These figures are illustrative and are the same as in our occupancy and ADR guides. A 20-room hotel in Mysuru, November (30 nights):

| Item | Figure |
| --- | --- |
| Rooms available | 20 × 30 = 600 room-nights |
| Paid room-nights sold | 390 |
| Complimentary room-nights (not counted as sold) | 6 |
| Room revenue, excluding GST | ₹9,36,000 |
| Occupancy | 390 ÷ 600 × 100 = 65 per cent |
| ADR | ₹9,36,000 ÷ 390 = ₹2,400 |
| **RevPAR** | ₹9,36,000 ÷ 600 = **₹1,560** |

Check it with the shortcut: 65 per cent × ₹2,400 = ₹1,560. If the two methods ever disagree on your own report, the counts are inconsistent somewhere, usually complimentary rooms or a room taken out of inventory in one place and not the other.

A single night works the same way. If the hotel sells 13 rooms for ₹31,850 tonight, RevPAR for the night is ₹31,850 ÷ 20 = ₹1,592.50.

### RevPAR for hostels and homestays

Hostels can use the same idea per bed: **revenue per available bed** = dorm bed revenue ÷ bed-nights available. An illustrative hostel with 40 dorm beds sells 900 of its 1,200 bed-nights in a month at an average of ₹700, earning ₹6,30,000; revenue per available bed is ₹6,30,000 ÷ 1,200 = ₹525. Keep private rooms on their own line with an ordinary RevPAR.

A homestay that is often let as a whole house should still divide each booking into room-nights, as our ADR guide shows, so that whole-house stays and room-by-room stays count the same way. A homestay that closes for part of the year counts only the nights it was open for sale in rooms available, and says so on the report.

## RevPAR vs ADR: why you need both

ADR rewards price. Occupancy rewards volume. RevPAR rewards the balance. Here are three ways the same 20-room hotel could have run November, all illustrative:

| Strategy | Rooms sold | Occupancy | ADR | Room revenue | RevPAR |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| A: cut rates to fill up | 480 | 80 per cent | ₹1,800 | ₹8,64,000 | ₹1,440 |
| B: what actually happened | 390 | 65 per cent | ₹2,400 | ₹9,36,000 | ₹1,560 |
| C: hold rates high | 330 | 55 per cent | ₹2,750 | ₹9,07,500 | ₹1,513 |

Strategy A has the busiest hotel and the lowest RevPAR. Strategy C has the highest ADR and still earns less than B. And A is worse than it looks, because 90 more rooms sold means 90 more rooms to clean, launder and light. Our ADR guide puts an illustrative cost of ₹650 on each occupied room-night. At that cost, A earns ₹72,000 less room revenue than B and spends ₹58,500 more to service the extra rooms: ₹1,30,500 worse in a single month.

Use them together:

- **ADR** tells you whether your pricing is holding.
- **Occupancy** tells you whether demand is there.
- **RevPAR** tells you whether the combination is working.

One caution. RevPAR does not see costs or commission, so a strategy can lift RevPAR and still leave less money in the bank, for example by buying occupancy through an expensive OTA promotion. That is why the sections below add net RevPAR and GOPPAR. And because RevPAR divides by rooms available, it cannot be flattered by quietly removing rooms from inventory the way occupancy sometimes is, as long as you count rooms available the same way every month. That makes it the fairest single number for comparing one month, one property or one manager with another.

## What is a good RevPAR?

There is no national figure worth quoting for a small Indian property. RevPAR depends on your city, your micro-market, your season, your room size and your star category. A good RevPAR is one that does well on two comparisons:

1. **Against yourself.** This November against last November, this Diwali week against last Diwali week. If RevPAR is up, find out whether occupancy or ADR moved it.
2. **Against similar properties nearby.** Hotels of similar size and price in your area, sometimes called a competitive set. Large hotels buy benchmark reports for this. A small property can start by checking rates and availability of five or six neighbours on the OTAs and Google for the same dates, every week.

### A weekly neighbour check

Every Monday, for the coming Saturday and the coming Tuesday, note for five or six similar properties nearby:

| Property | Room type closest to yours | Rate shown (Saturday) | Sold out? | Rate shown (Tuesday) | Sold out? |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Neighbour 1 | Deluxe double | ₹ | Yes or no | ₹ | Yes or no |
| Neighbour 2 | Deluxe double | ₹ | Yes or no | ₹ | Yes or no |

After a month you will see who sells out first and at what price, which tells you more about your own RevPAR than any national average.

When you have a comparison set, the industry measure is the **RevPAR index**: your RevPAR ÷ the set's RevPAR × 100. Above 100 means you take more than your fair share of the area's room revenue. Below 100 means someone nearby is winning guests or rate that you are not.

> **RevPAR and the GST band**
>
> Never include GST in RevPAR. A rate change that moves rooms between GST bands changes what the guest pays, not your room revenue. See [GST on hotel rooms and restaurants](https://guesthawk.com/guides/gst-on-hotel-rooms-and-restaurants) for the bands.

## Total RevPAR (TRevPAR) and GOPPAR

RevPAR looks only at rooms. Many Indian properties earn real money from the restaurant, banquets, laundry, cabs and experiences, so two wider measures help.

**Total RevPAR (TRevPAR)** = total operating revenue ÷ rooms available. Use revenue before GST from every department.

For our hotel, restaurant, laundry and cab revenue in November was ₹1,44,000 before GST. Total revenue is ₹9,36,000 + ₹1,44,000 = ₹10,80,000, so **TRevPAR = ₹10,80,000 ÷ 600 = ₹1,800**, against a RevPAR of ₹1,560. A property with a busy restaurant or a banquet hall can have a TRevPAR far above its RevPAR; a homestay with no kitchen will have almost no gap.

**GOPPAR** = gross operating profit ÷ rooms available. It is the profit version of RevPAR, and it is what an owner or lender ultimately cares about.

## Net RevPAR: after commission

Like ADR, standard RevPAR uses the price the guest paid before commission. For your own decisions, also look at RevPAR after distribution costs. In our ADR guide, illustrative OTA commission of ₹86,940 left room revenue after commission of ₹8,49,060. **Net RevPAR** is then ₹8,49,060 ÷ 600 = about ₹1,415, not ₹1,560.

Moving a share of OTA guests to direct booking raises net RevPAR without changing the headline RevPAR at all. That is the quiet win in our guide to [cutting OTA commission](https://guesthawk.com/guides/cutting-ota-commission). Use the commission rate in your own contract, not ours.

## How to raise RevPAR in a small property

RevPAR rises when you sell more rooms at the same rate, the same rooms at a higher rate, or both. Practical levers:

- **Fill the weak nights first.** Most small hotels are close to full at weekends and half empty on weekdays. Corporate rates, travel agents, long-stay offers and packages fill Tuesdays without touching the Saturday rate.
- **Raise rates where demand is already there.** If the long weekend is 80 per cent booked three weeks out, the remaining rooms are worth more. That is the logic of [dynamic pricing for hotels](https://guesthawk.com/guides/dynamic-pricing-for-hotels).
- **Use stay rules on peak dates.** A two-night minimum stay over a festival stops a one-night booking from blocking a three-night one.
- **Cut no-shows and late cancellations.** Take an advance by UPI for peak dates, and release unpaid holds on time.
- **Fix the room types.** If deluxe rooms sell out and standard rooms sit empty, the price gap between them is probably wrong.
- **Watch the channel mix.** The same RevPAR earned with fewer commission-paying bookings is worth more.

All of this is the day-to-day work of [hotel revenue management](https://guesthawk.com/guides/hotel-revenue-management).

## A monthly RevPAR checklist

1. Close every night of the month in your end-of-day close.
2. Take room revenue before GST, with meal values taken out of package rates.
3. Count rooms available and paid rooms sold; list complimentary rooms separately.
4. Work out occupancy, ADR and RevPAR, and check that occupancy × ADR = RevPAR.
5. Work out TRevPAR and net RevPAR after commission.
6. Compare with the same month last year, and note whether occupancy or ADR made the difference.
7. Note what neighbours charged on your three busiest and three quietest dates.
8. Decide one change for next month: a weekday offer, a minimum stay, a rate step.

## Where GuestHawk fits

GuestHawk's [daily owner digest](https://guesthawk.com/platform#finance) sends revenue, occupancy and rate every morning, and its benchmarks show how your occupancy and rate compare with similar properties nearby, anonymised. See the [platform](https://guesthawk.com/platform#channels) for channels and rates.

## Frequently asked questions

### What is the RevPAR formula?

RevPAR = room revenue ÷ rooms available. It also equals occupancy × ADR. A 20-room hotel with ₹9,36,000 of room revenue in a 30-night month has 600 room-nights available, so RevPAR is ₹1,560.

### What is the difference between RevPAR and ADR?

[ADR](https://guesthawk.com/guides/adr-in-hotel) divides room revenue by rooms **sold**, so it ignores empty rooms. RevPAR divides by rooms **available**, so every empty room pulls it down. ADR measures price; RevPAR measures how well the whole hotel earned.

### What is a good RevPAR for a hotel in India?

There is no single good number, because RevPAR depends on city, season, star category and room size. A good RevPAR is one that beats your own figure for the same month last year and holds its own against similar properties nearby.

### Does RevPAR include restaurant revenue?

No. RevPAR uses room revenue only, before GST. Total RevPAR (TRevPAR) adds restaurant, banquet, laundry and other revenue, divided by the same rooms available.

### What is GOPPAR?

GOPPAR is gross operating profit per available room: gross operating profit ÷ rooms available. It shows profit rather than revenue, so it catches growth that costs more than it earns.

## Sources

- [STR: How to read a STAR report](https://str.com/sites/default/files/2019-07/how-to-read-star-report.pdf)
- [STR: Hotel profit and loss glossary](https://str.com/sites/default/files/profit-and-loss-glossary.pdf)
- [CoStar: STR Benchmark glossary of hotel performance terms](https://www.costar.com/products/str-benchmark/resources/glossary)