A prospective guest who, despite having made a reservation in advance, never arrives at the hotel.

Business at a hotel that is difficult to regulate using revenue management
methods. Forms of nonyieldable business include groups, volume accounts, tour
operators, and airline crews.

A method used by hotels to protect revenues from the losses caused by noshows. Overbooking is essential to hotel revenue management.

To overbook is to sell more rooms than the hotel has so that in the inevitable event that scheduled travelers do not arrive, the hotel can still enjoy full occupancy.

The cost to the hotel of walking a guest, divided by the sum of this same cost
plus the contribution from a room-night at the hotel. Expressed as an equation,
the overbooking ratio = walk / (walk + empty).

When a hotel overbooks by so many rooms that, even after accounting for noshows, it still does not have enough rooms to accommodate all of its reservations.

A group-forecasting method in which the historically observed pickup for groups
is applied to a current group booking.

Hotel guests who, having made a reservation for an extended stay, keep to their commitment and stay through to their scheduled check-out date.

All hotel business exclusive of nonyieldable business.

The forecastable percentage of the rooms initially agreed to by a group that the
group will actually use and pay for. This percent can be calculated by inserting
historical data into the following equation: utilization percent = number of rooms
used / number of rooms requested.

In a hotel, the actual cost of hosting a patron in a room for the evening, including soap and laundry costs, etc.

To reject a reservation-holding guest when the hotel is oversold.

Hotel patrons who approach the hotel's front desk looking for a room without having made a reservation in advance.