What is RevPASH, and should you track it?

Two restaurants on the same street both take 9,000.00 on a Saturday night. One has sixty seats and is open for five hours; the other has forty seats and is open for four. On the takings alone, they look the same. Measured against the seats and the hours each one had to sell, they are very different businesses, and only one of them is getting the most from its room.

What is RevPASH? It stands for revenue per available seat hour: the revenue a venue earns for each seat it has, for each hour it is open. It brings together two things that every restaurant sells, seats and time, and shows how well both are being used. Hotels have long measured the revenue from each available room; RevPASH applies the same thinking to a dining room.

This guide covers what RevPASH is, how to work it out with a worked example, how it differs from revenue per seat and the table turnover rate, how to read it by the hour, what moves it and which venues it genuinely helps. Every venue and figure in it is an example.

RevPASH is revenue divided by available seat hours. Available seat hours are the number of seats multiplied by the number of hours the venue is open for service. A room of sixty seats, open for five hours, has 300 available seat hours.

If that room takes 9,000.00 in those five hours, its RevPASH is 9,000.00 divided by 300: 30.00 per seat hour. The figure says how much each seat earned, on average, for each hour it was available to sell.

The formula has three parts. First, the revenue for the period, usually the sales for a service or a day, before tax. Second, the seats available, which is the number of seats the room can sell, not the number of chairs in the store room. Third, the hours, which is the length of the service the seats were available for.

RevPASH is the revenue divided by the seats multiplied by the hours. Work it out for a service, a day, a week or a month, but always with the same definitions, so the figures can be compared.

Take an invented bistro with sixty seats, open for dinner from half past five to half past ten: five hours, so 300 available seat hours. On a Saturday it takes 9,000.00. Its RevPASH for the evening is 30.00.

Now look at the same evening hour by hour, with the revenue for each hour divided by the sixty seats:

The evening's average of 30.00 hides a wide range. The two middle hours earn three times as much per seat as the first and last. The room is full, or close to it, from half past six to half past nine, and largely empty at either end.

That is the useful part of RevPASH. It shows where the venue has seats and time to sell that it is not selling, and where it is already at its limit. The first and last hours are where more revenue is most likely to come from; the busiest hours are where better turns or higher spend would matter.

Revenue per seat is the revenue divided by the number of seats, without the hours. In the example, 9,000.00 over sixty seats is 150.00 per seat for the evening. It is a simpler measure, and useful for comparing rooms, or for a landlord thinking about rent. Our guide to revenue per seat: the number landlords understand covers it.

RevPASH adds the hours. Two venues with the same revenue per seat can have very different RevPASH if one is open twice as long. It answers a slightly different question: not how much each seat earns, but how well the venue uses the time each seat is available.

The table turnover rate is the number of times a table, or a seat, is used during a service. A table that seats three parties in an evening has turned three times. Turnover is one of the two levers behind RevPASH: more turns, at the same spend, mean more revenue per seat hour.

The other lever is spend: how much each guest spends while they are seated. A venue can raise its RevPASH by turning tables faster, by raising the spend per guest, or both. Our guide to table turnover rate: how to raise it politely covers the first lever.

Capacity utilisation is the share of the available seat hours that were actually used by guests. If guests occupied 210 of the 300 available seat hours in the example, the room's capacity utilisation was 70 per cent.

RevPASH combines utilisation with spend. A room that is full but whose guests spend little can have the same RevPASH as one that is half empty with guests who spend a great deal. Knowing both tells the venue which lever to pull.

RevPASH moves when either the use of the seats or the spend per seat hour changes. Filling the quiet hours, turning tables a little faster at the peak, matching table sizes to party sizes so fewer seats sit empty and raising the average spend all lift it.

Things can also lower it without anyone noticing: long gaps between seatings, a table for four given to a couple at the busiest hour, guests lingering long after paying on a night with a waiting list, or a menu that sells less as the room fills.

Some seats are empty even when the room is full: the two empty chairs at a table for four seated with a couple, the gap between one booking leaving and the next arriving, the table held for a party that arrives late. RevPASH counts all of them as available and unsold.

Matching tables to parties is one of the simplest ways to lift RevPASH at the peak. A room with the right mix of twos and fours sells more of its seats when it is busy.

To use RevPASH properly, the venue needs its revenue by hour, not just by day. Most tills can show sales by hour, and the hourly figures, divided by the seats, give RevPASH for each hour of the service.

Look at several weeks, not one night, because a single evening can be unusual. The pattern across a month shows which hours are reliably quiet and which are reliably full.

RevPASH is most useful for venues that sell their seats by the hour and are often full at the peak: busy restaurants with bookings, venues with two sittings and places with a long waiting list on their busiest nights. For them, small improvements in the use of each seat hour add up quickly.

It is less useful for venues that are rarely full, where the problem is bringing guests in rather than using the seats better, and for venues such as cafés with very short stays, where transactions per hour may be the simpler measure.

RevPASH can mislead if it is used alone. A venue that rushes guests to raise its turnover may lift RevPASH for a few weeks and lose its regulars. One that pushes spend too hard may see the same.

Read it beside the guests' experience: the feedback, the return rate and the length of a typical stay. The aim is to use the seats and the hours well, not to squeeze every guest.

RevPASH is useful for comparing: one night of the week with another, this month with the same month last year, or one venue with another in a group. Because it accounts for the seats and the hours, it compares a small venue with a large one fairly.

Keep the definitions the same everywhere: the same treatment of tax, the same count of seats and the same hours. A comparison between a venue that counts its terrace and one that does not is no comparison.

A terrace that opens in the warm months adds seats, and with them available seat hours. Count them only when they are genuinely available, or the RevPASH will fall on every cold day the terrace is closed and rise when it opens, for reasons that have nothing to do with how well the venue sells.

Decide how to treat seasonal seats once, and keep to it. Many venues work out RevPASH for the main room and the terrace separately.

Once the venue knows its RevPASH by hour and by day, it can set targets: a figure for the quiet first hour, a figure for the peak, a figure for the week. Targets are most useful where the hourly view shows a clear gap.

A target for the first hour of dinner, for example, might lead to an early set menu or a pre-theatre offer. A target for the peak might lead to better table matching or a firmer booking length.

The quiet hours are usually where RevPASH has most room to grow. An early evening offer, a pre-theatre menu, a late-night menu or bookings encouraged at those times can fill seats that would otherwise earn nothing.

Cost every offer for its margin before running it. Our guide to offer margin: the sum to do before you publish covers the sum. Filling a quiet hour at a loss does not help the business, whatever it does to the RevPASH.

At the peak, the room is full, so RevPASH grows only through better use of the seats or higher spend. Match tables to parties, keep the turns between seatings short, set a booking length that matches the menu and make sure every guest is offered the drinks, sides and desserts they might enjoy.

Our guide to RevPASH: revenue per available seat hour covers the levers at the peak in more detail.

RevPASH is one measure among several. Revenue management, the discipline it comes from, uses it alongside prices, demand forecasts and booking patterns to decide how to sell a limited stock of seats and time.

A restaurant does not need the whole discipline to benefit from the idea. Knowing its RevPASH by hour, and acting on the quiet hours and the peak, is enough to make better decisions.

Use the same revenue figure every time. Most venues use sales before tax and before any service charge, because tax and service charges do not belong to the venue's trade in the same way. Some include drinks and food together; others work out RevPASH for food alone.

Whatever the choice, write it down and keep to it. A RevPASH that includes service charges one month and leaves them out the next will move for reasons that have nothing to do with the room.

RevPASH divides by seats, not covers. Seats are fixed: the number the room can sell. Covers change every night: the number of guests who came. Dividing by covers would give revenue per guest, which is the average spend, a different and also useful number.

The difference is the point. RevPASH asks how well the room was used, so it counts every seat that could have been sold, whether or not a guest sat in it.

Work out RevPASH for each service separately. Lunch and dinner often have different lengths, different spends and different patterns, and an average across the day hides both.

A lunch with a low RevPASH may still be worth opening, if it covers its costs and brings guests who return for dinner. Seeing each service on its own makes that decision clearer.

A small venue can use RevPASH as easily as a large one. With twenty seats and a four-hour service, it has 80 available seat hours; a night that takes 1,600.00 has a RevPASH of 20.00.

For a small venue, the hourly view is especially useful, because a few empty seats in the busiest hour are a large share of the room. Matching tables to parties, and filling the first and last hours, can make a noticeable difference.

Raising prices lifts RevPASH directly, as long as guests keep coming. Lowering prices may fill quiet hours but lower the revenue per seat hour if the extra guests do not make up for it.

Use RevPASH to test pricing decisions: a pre-theatre menu priced to fill the first hour should raise that hour's RevPASH without lowering the evening's. If it does not, the price or the offer needs another look.

Booking rules shape RevPASH. The length of each booking, the times guests can book and the tables offered for each party size decide how many seat hours are sold. A booking length that is longer than guests need leaves seats empty between parties; one that is too short makes guests wait.

Review the booking rules alongside the hourly RevPASH. Our guide to what a turn time is, and who decides it covers the time each table is given.

RevPASH is a manager's number, but the team's work moves it. Servers who clear and reset tables quickly, hosts who match tables to parties and a floor that offers drinks and desserts all raise it.

Explain it simply: "every empty seat in the busiest hour is money we cannot get back". A team that understands why the first and last hours matter will help fill them.

RevPASH by hour is the most useful view for decisions, but a weekly and monthly figure shows the trend. A RevPASH that rises month by month shows the room being used better; one that falls, with the same covers, may point to lower spend or longer gaps between parties.

Read the trend beside the covers and the average spend. Together, the three show whether a change in RevPASH came from more guests, guests spending more or guests using the seats for longer.

For a venue that has never measured RevPASH, the first step is simple: take one busy service, note the revenue for each hour and divide it by the seats. Do the same for one quiet service. The two sets of figures will show where the opportunity lies more clearly than any average.

The second restaurant on the street, with forty seats and open for four hours, also takes 9,000.00. It has 160 available seat hours, so its RevPASH is 56.25: nearly twice the first bistro's 30.00.

The second restaurant is using its seats and its hours far more intensively. The first has more seats and longer hours than its trade fills, and its RevPASH shows it. The question for the first is not how to earn more in total, but whether its quiet hours, or some of its seats, earn their keep.

servearound does not show RevPASH as a single figure, but it holds the parts. Table analytics show seatings, covers, revenue, utilisation, the median seating time and the gap between seatings, with every table's seats, revenue per seat and revenue per hour, and payment analytics show what was collected by day and by hour.

To work out RevPASH by hand, divide the revenue for a period by the room's seats, the sum of the Seats column, multiplied by the service hours. Utilisation in servearound is the minutes each table had a party against the service minutes the venue's shifts make available, which is the capacity utilisation side of the same picture. See Analytics.

Revenue per available seat hour: revenue divided by seats multiplied by the hours open.

Revenue for the period, divided by the seats available times the hours of service.

Revenue per seat ignores the hours; RevPASH includes them.

The use of the seats, through turns and table matching, and the spend per guest.

Venues that are often full at the peak and sell their seats by the hour.

Yes. The hourly view shows where the seats and time go unsold.

Yes, if it is raised by rushing guests. Read it beside their experience.

Act on the quiet hours with costed offers, and on the peak with better table use.

What is RevPASH? It is revenue per available seat hour: revenue divided by the seats available multiplied by the hours of service. It shows how well a venue uses both its seats and its time, and compared with revenue per seat it adds the hours that make a long-open room look different from a short one.

Work out RevPASH by hour, because the average hides the quiet hours and the full ones. Lift it through capacity utilisation, the table turnover rate and the spend per guest, act on the quiet hours with costed offers and on the peak with better table matching, and read it beside the guests' experience, not instead of it.