Hotel Glossary Terms

Business-to-Business (B2B) An organization focused on selling products, services or data to commercial customers rather than individual consumers. Also known as B2B.

Business-to-Consumer (B2C): An organization focused on selling products, services or data to individual consumers rather than commercial customers. Also known as B2C.

Light yeast-cake soaked in rum syrup, brushed with apricot jam and decorated with cream.

Baby Boomer is generally refers to people born in the U.S. and Western Europe from 1946 to 1964. In the U.S., the total number of Baby Boomers is about 78 million--one of the largest and most affluent demographic groups. The term evolved to include the children of soldiers and war industry workers who were involved in World War II. When those veterans and workers returned to civilian life they started or added to families in large numbers. As a result, the baby boom generation is one of the largest demographic segments in the U.S. Some baby boomers have already started reaching early retirement age. By 2011, millions will begin turning traditional retirement age (65), resulting in extremely rapid growth in the senior portion of the population.

One who is hired to care for a baby in the absence of parents.

Bacillus is a bacterium that is rod-shaped.

Back of the house: The functional areas of the hotel in which employees have little or no guest contact, such as the engineering and maintenance department, laundry room and so on.

Back office is the accounting office of a hotel.

Back office accounts payable are the amounts of money that have been prepaid on behalf of the guest for future consumption of a good or service (sometimes referred to as back office cash accounts).

Back to back: Describes a heavy rate of checkouts and check-ins on the same day, so that as soon as the room is made up, a new guest checks into it.

Back-of-the-house areas are the functional areas of the hotel in which employees have little or no guest contact, such as engineering and maintenance.

Single-celled micro-organisms, some of which can cause diseases, including foodborne diseases.

Bacterial aer the soils or compounds containing active (live) bacteria.

Bacteriostat is an agent that arrests the growth of bacteria.

Badge system in hotels are a method of identifying employees by their identification badges. A badge usually indicates where an employee works and identification number and may contain the employee’s photograph.