Best Available Rate (BAR)

Best available rate (BAR) is a hotel's daily, default price for a room type: the lowest rate it offers to any guest on a given date, with no qualifying condition attached. A lower price should exist only when it is qualified or fenced (Tools - HSMAI Americas (Property Level Rates checklist)) (About Best Available Rates - OPERA Cloud User Guide, Release 22.2 (Oracle)).

Last updated: October 2026

How the best available rate works

A hotel sets a BAR for each room type and date, and adjusts it as market conditions change, which is what sets it apart from a fixed rack rate (Rack Rates, BAR, Discounts, and More: A Guide to Hotel Prices (AltexSoft)). At Hilton, BAR is also called the Flexible rate: the best published unrestricted rate, sold under the hotel's standard guarantee and cancellation policy (Rate types - Help Center (Hilton)).

Inside the property system, BAR is a setting with rules of its own. Oracle OPERA Cloud offers three types of best available rate. With OPERA Cloud's Best BAR by Day type, a property can set up several BAR codes, but only the lowest-priced one shows on the Look to Book sales screen, and other base rate codes can take their price from it (About Best Available Rates - OPERA Cloud User Guide, Release 22.2 (Oracle)).

Booking.com uses a similar idea. On Booking.com, a property that turns on derived pricing creates one standard rate for a room's base or maximum occupancy, and the extranet then adds or subtracts a set percentage per person as the number of guests changes (Setting up derived pricing - Partner Hub (Booking.com)).

Why the best available rate matters for hotel distribution

The recommended GDS rate order puts BAR at the top of a hotel's rate list, then discount and promotional rates, then packages. A GDS audit should also load every room type against BAR, suites included, and keep public rates to five or six (Tools - HSMAI Americas (Property Level Rates checklist)).

Discounted rates can be priced as a cut from BAR. At participating Hilton hotels, the Advance Purchase rate needs full non-refundable prepayment at least seven days before arrival, and its discount commonly ranges from 8 to 15 percent off BAR; the members-only Honors Discount Advance Purchase rate commonly ranges from 10 to 17 percent off (Advance Purchase Discount offer terms (Hilton)).

Wholesale prices can hang off it too. Marriott offers its unpublished FIT package rates to wholesalers as net, non-commissionable rates at a discount off each hotel's BAR at the time of booking, for sale only inside dynamic packages (Wholesaler Program - Terms and Conditions (Marriott)). A travel wholesaler can sell those rates only inside a package.

The share of business booked at BAR is also a health check. A higher share of business booked at BAR or retail rates typically goes with better hotel performance, and a very low share may point to a BAR that is priced too high (Thrive. Don't just survive. Top 12 Revenue Management Initiatives for 2009 (HSMAI USA, Hospitality Net)). That guidance dates from the 2009 downturn and is an opinion from revenue managers, without a measured statistic behind it.

Best available rate compared with other rate types

Rate typeWho can book itHow it relates to BAR
Best available rate (BAR)Any guest, no conditionsThe daily default and the reference point
Rack rateAny guestPublished, undiscounted, usually the highest rate
Qualified and negotiated ratesLoyalty members, corporate accounts, groups, AAA or government travellersMay sit below BAR because they carry a condition
Discounted and derived ratesGuests who accept a condition, such as advance purchase or a packageRecommended to be listed after BAR in the GDS (HSMAI), or priced from it

Rack rate: Rack Rates, BAR, Discounts, and More: A Guide to Hotel Prices (AltexSoft). Qualified and fenced rates: Tools - HSMAI Americas (Property Level Rates checklist) and Wholesaler Program - Terms and Conditions (Marriott). Derived rates: About Best Available Rates - OPERA Cloud User Guide, Release 22.2 (Oracle).

Frequently asked questions

What is a BAR rate in a hotel?
A BAR rate is the hotel's best available rate: its standard public price for a room type on the day you book. Rates that need a qualification sit outside it. Marriott's wholesaler terms, for example, define BAR as the rate published to the general public on its websites, and leave out loyalty-member, specially negotiated, corporate and group rates, plus rates that need proof of membership, such as AAA and government rates.
What is the best available rate in the hotel industry?
It is a way of quoting price night by night. BAR pricing was meant to cut confusion and guarantee guests the lowest available rate for each night of a multi-night stay, as a 2005 report from Cornell's Center for Hospitality Research describes it.
How do hotels calculate a BAR rate?
Other prices are worked out from BAR. An advance purchase rate can be priced as a percentage off BAR, and occupancy pricing on a booking site can add or subtract a set percentage for each guest above or below the base occupancy.
Why does a BAR quote show a different price for each night?
Guests rated per-night rates as fairer, more acceptable and more honest than one blended average in a Cornell survey of 153 travellers. Frequent travellers saw no difference in fairness between the two; infrequent travellers preferred per-night rates. Per-night pricing also produced higher willingness to book than a blended rate in a 2009 study in the International Journal of Hospitality Management.
Is the best available rate always the cheapest price?
For a guest who qualifies for nothing else, it should be. A guest with a membership or who accepts conditions can often find more than one price. On IHG's websites, for example, a search with "Best Available" as the price preference returns several price types, such as Best Flexible, Advance Purchase and the loyalty member rate, all counted as the best prices currently available for that search.

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Where Jetstream fits

A best available rate changes often, and every rate built on it changes with it, so the price a guest sees is only as good as the last update that reached each channel. Jetstream builds an AI channel manager that connects a property's systems to the channels where guests book, and keeps rooms, rates and availability accurate on each one, managed from one place.

See Jetstream's AI channel manager Book a demo