NB: This is a guest article by Dorian Harris, founder of hotel booking site Skoosh.
With no formal training in marketing, I'm often quite baffled by the industry's terms and expressions. Perhaps cynically, I often feel they're put in place to distract the consumer.
Sometimes I think we even confuse ourselves with them, and never more so than with the pervasive "Rate Integrity".
Like so much in marketing speak it looks and sounds right at first glance, but these things often don't hold up against closer scrutiny.
"Integrity" itself is a no-brainer - we all want to have integrity in business and any suggestion to the contrary isn't going to be well received.
I certainly don't like mine being challenged, though, on many occasions, I've been told by hoteliers that my actions are "in violation" of their rate integrity, which makes it sound like a huge, perhaps criminal offence.
So what is this thing that I am violating? Rate integrity to me simply means that you can justify the price you're selling your rooms at.
That's reasonable enough - but what is the price of a room?
I'm not sure what else hoteliers factor into their pricing, but a major component appears to be the price of nearby competitor hotels. That's a reasonably standard business practise.
I've no doubt that supermarket chains keep a close tab on each other's prices, as do all direct competitors.
However, there is a big difference in the travel industry, which we're all aware of, in that the price goes up and down depending on availability on any particular date.
That's not the case with most household products. You may see the iPhone vary by 10% or so depending on the outlet, but never by 100%, and nor does it fluctuate much in relation to the price of other phones.
To me, that's integrity.
What we see in the travel industry is much more like a stock market. The same room can be bought for £100 or £300, depending on date of travel.
I think the customer understands that, to some extent, hotels are assisted here by the nature of the airline industry and the ever changing flight prices.
So what you appear to be telling customers as a hotelier is that the rate at your hotel is subject to demand and supply more than, say, quality.
The room you're selling at £300 on October 17 is the same standard as the one you're selling for £100 on the October 19 - the difference is down to availability.
Integrity in this sense, if that's the right terminology at all, is being able to explain that to the consumer.
So, are we doing that?
NB: This is a guest article by Dorian Harris, founder of hotel booking site Skoosh.