Full Form of BAR
Best Available Rate
BAR Full Form is Best Available Rate. Best Available rate, also known as Best Rate Guarantee (abbreviated as BRG), is one of the recent pricing mechanisms that are increasingly implemented by hotel chains and hotels across the globe. BAR was introduced as an outcome of the hotel industry attempting to mimic the airline industry, which also sets prices on the basis of demand. There are many constructions of BAR available in the hotel industry.
The practice of the hotel industry to have BAR rates for rooms is called Rate Parity. Rate parity is largely used in the hotel industry, although lately the value of the same is being questioned. In the year 2010, the Competition Authority of the United Kingdom, the Office of Fair Trading (abbreviated as OFT), started a formal investigation into this practice after having received a complaint from Skoosh, an Online Travel Agent. During the course of the investigation and thereafter, several European States have questioned the legal status of this practice such as France and the United Kingdom.
In the year 2015, France was the first European country to formally ban rate parity clauses in agreements and contracts following the enactment of the final vote of what is known as Law Macron. It ordered the removal of such clauses from the contracts entered between Online Travel Agents and Hoteliers. In the same year, a German Court banned the website Booking.com from applying its BAR clauses and ordered the removal of the same from its contracts.