Hotel sales terms: account, production, lead and other words in a sales office

Hotel sales terms are the working words a sales office uses to describe who it sells to, what stage a piece of business is at, what activity produced it and what it delivered. An account is the organization a hotel sells to; production is the room nights and revenue that account actually delivered in a period.

In a new hire's first week, someone asks "what is the production on that account" and, two minutes later, "is it definite yet". Nobody has explained either word, and both answers will end up in a report the general manager reads. This article defines the words of the sales office, one meaning each, with an example line and the report where each word appears. Read it once as a reference and once as a training sheet, and keep it beside the separate list of hotel distribution terms explained: contracts, rates, channels.

What is hotel sales, and why does its vocabulary confuse new staff?#

Hotel sales is the work of finding, winning and keeping the organizations that send business to a hotel: travel agencies, tour operators, corporate accounts, event organizers and groups. The vocabulary confuses people because the same words arrive from three different trades and are then used loosely in meetings.

Three traditions feed the words. The agency and tour-operator trade brought its own habits of speech, the corporate travel world brought another, and the events trade (MICE: meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) brought a third. A word like "production" can mean slightly different things in each, and a new hire hears all three in the same week.

Sales is not reservations. Reservations takes the booking the guest or the agent makes; sales builds the relationship and the terms the booking will run on. Sales is not marketing either: marketing creates public demand, while sales works account by account, with names, dates and follow-ups.

Loose words cost money. A verbal "definite" that was only a request, a "target" that turns out to mean last year's number, an "account" that is really one person at one company: each of these produces a bad decision somewhere downstream. The rule this article follows is simple: one word, one meaning, written into the department's own glossary so that a new hire and a client mean the same thing when they say it.

Keep contract and channel words (allotment, release period, stop sale, net rate, commission) on a separate sheet. They belong to distribution, not to selling, and keeping the two lists apart avoids double definitions.

Accounts and contacts: what is an account in a hotel sales office?#

An account is the organization a hotel sells to and keeps a record of, not the person you talk to. The person is the contact; the account is the company, agency or corporate buyer that negotiates, books and pays.

One record per organization. Decide once whether a chain's head office and its local plant are one account or two, write the decision down, and stop re-deciding it every quarter. Contacts move jobs; the account stays, which is why the account record must never depend on one name.

A key account is an account the hotel has decided to protect and grow, with one named owner and a short written plan for the year. A prospect is an organization that does not buy yet; it becomes an account when it books or signs, and the record should show which one it is. Separate the decision maker from the booker, because the person who negotiates the rate is often not the person who reserves the room, and a sales office needs both names on file.

One owner per account. Two sellers working the same buyer without knowing it is how a hotel ends up quoting two different rates to the same company in the same week.

Lead, tentative, definite, lost: how does a piece of business move?#

A lead is an enquiry nobody has qualified yet; tentative is business the hotel is holding but not committed to; definite is business confirmed in writing; lost business is a request the hotel could not or did not convert.

Qualify a lead with four questions before it enters the pipeline: which dates, how many rooms, who pays, who decides. A lead that cannot answer these is a name, not a lead. Tentative needs an expiry date: a hold without a date is not a hold, it is a hope, and it will still be sitting in the pipeline in three months. When two holds sit on the same rooms, rank them and write the ranking down, so the pipeline shows which one the hotel would rather keep.

Definite means confirmed in writing, with whatever deposit or signed agreement the hotel's own rule requires. A verbal assurance from a buyer is not definite, however friendly the call was. Lost business is a stage, not a deletion: record the reason and the value, or the department repeats the same loss next season without noticing. Recording losses properly is its own discipline, covered in recording turnaways and lost requests.

Different trades say option, hold or provisional for roughly the same thing. Choose one word for internal use and translate it when you speak to the client. The pipeline is only as good as its stage labels: if two sellers stage the same enquiry differently, the weekly total means nothing.

Sales call, sales blitz, site inspection, workshop, roadshow: what do the activity words mean?#

They are the activities a sales office logs: a planned visit to one account, a concentrated push on many accounts in a short time, a buyer's visit to the hotel, a table-top event where sellers meet buyers by appointment, and a series of presentations across several cities.

A sales call is a visit or meeting with a stated purpose and a written report afterwards. No report, no call: the activity did not happen in any useful sense. A sales blitz is a short, planned push, for example three days in one source city with appointments booked before departure; judge it by appointments kept and leads qualified, not by business cards collected. A site inspection is the buyer walking the hotel, and the checklist is rooms, meeting space, access and one thing the hotel cannot fix, because the buyer will notice that too.

A workshop is a trade event where suppliers sit at tables and buyers rotate on a schedule. It rewards a one-page fact sheet and a three-minute pitch, not a brochure. A roadshow is the hotel or a group presenting in several cities in one trip, usually to agencies and corporate buyers; the report is a list of who attended and what each one asked for. Every activity writes into a different report: the activity report, the blitz summary, the site inspection note, and the account record that ties them together.

Production, target, conversion: what do the number words mean?#

Production is what an account actually delivered in a stated period, measured in room nights and revenue; a target is what the hotel planned for that account; conversion is how many qualified leads became definite business.

Production comes from the hotel's own system, filtered by account, for a named period. It is never "always" and never from memory. When the partner's own summary and the hotel's system disagree, compare the two before the meeting: the gap is usually a definition, such as cancelled bookings, no-shows, or a different date basis. The mechanics of that comparison are covered in the agency production report: ranking partners by what they really bring.

A target needs its basis written next to it, for example last year's production plus a stated change. A target with no basis is a wish that will be argued about in December. Conversion is counted over the same period at both ends: leads qualified at the start, definite business at the end. A high lead count with low conversion is a qualification problem, not a selling problem.

Account share is the portion of an account's business the hotel gets, and growing share at an existing account is usually cheaper than finding a new one. Read production next to rate and segment: a large production figure from one account can still be the least profitable line in the report.

How do you teach these words to a new hire in the first week?#

Give the new hire the glossary, one real account and one real report, and make them use the words in writing before they use them with a client.

Day one: read the glossary aloud and use each word in one sentence about a real account, not a hypothetical one. Day two: shadow a sales call and write the report alone, then compare it with the senior seller's report line by line. Day three: pull one account's production from the system and explain the number out loud, including the period it covers. Day four: sit in the pipeline meeting and mark every stage change they hear, then check their marks against the record afterwards. Day five: a short written exercise, five accounts with one lead each, staged and dated, reviewed by the account owner.

Keep the glossary alive after the first week: one named owner, a review each quarter, and a rule that a new word enters the glossary before it enters a client email. The same routine fits inside the wider structure described in setting up a hotel sales department: roles, targets and a weekly routine.

What to do next#

Write the one-page glossary this week: the words your office already uses, one meaning each, one example line, and the report where each word appears. Then use it in the next pipeline meeting. A department that stages and measures the same way can train a new hire in a week instead of a season.