Availability, Rates & Inventory (ARI)
Availability, Rates & Inventory, commonly shortened to ARI, describes the core information hospitality systems exchange to determine what accommodation can be sold, when it can be sold, and at what price.
ARI is central to hotel distribution.
What ARI Represents
Availability Whether a room or room type can be booked for particular dates.
Rates The prices and Rate Plans offered for those dates.
Inventory The quantity of rooms available for sale.
Additional restrictions may also be distributed alongside ARI.
Oracle uses ARI explicitly throughout its current hospitality-distribution documentation for data published from property systems to connected booking channels. Oracle OPERA Cloud ARI documentation
Google Hotel Prices similarly requires ongoing availability, rate, and inventory information from connected hospitality partners. Google Hotel Prices integration overview
How It Works
Imagine a property has:
King Room July 12 3 rooms available Flexible rate: $249 Advance purchase: $219
That information can be distributed to:
When one room is booked, the available inventory may become:
2 rooms.
That updated information needs to reach the relevant channels.
Why It Matters
ARI disagreement creates some of the most visible hospitality-system failures.
Examples include:
- A room shown as available when it is sold out
- A stale rate on an OTA
- A direct Booking Engine showing different availability
- A closed rate plan remaining bookable
- Google displaying a price that does not match the booking landing page
Google's hotel documentation specifically emphasizes maintaining current pricing and availability and monitoring price accuracy. Google Hotel Prices documentation
Common Problems
Common problems include:
- Synchronization delays
- Room mapping errors
- Rate-plan mapping errors
- Restrictions not reaching every channel
- Several systems attempting to control the same inventory
- Manual availability adjustments
- Stale price feeds
How to Improve
Define where each piece of ARI originates.
For example:
PMS → availability RMS → recommended rates PMS/CRS → approved rates Channel Manager → distribution
The exact architecture varies.
What matters is that ownership is clear.