Sell limit

A cap on how many rooms a particular rate or rate group may sell, usually set per day and sometimes per room category.

Without a sell limit, a rate is a binary: open or closed. That forces a choice between leaving a discounted rate running on a night you could have sold at full price, and closing it manually every time demand picks up.

A sell limit sits between the two. You decide that a staff rate may take three rooms on a Saturday in July and twenty in November, and the rate stops selling once it hits the number. Setting the limit by room category goes further, letting a discounted rate sell into standard rooms while leaving suites available for full-rate business.

The practical catch is scope. A sell limit set in the PMS normally applies only where that PMS controls the inventory: its own front desk, its own booking engine and its own API. A rate distributed through a separate channel manager or booking engine may not respect the cap, so a sell limit is not a substitute for a stop sell pushed out to every channel.

Related terms: rate plan, availability block, last room value.