A hotel competitive set, also called a compset, is the group of properties you use as a reference when reviewing your own public rates. The useful question is not 'Which hotels are closest?' It is 'Which hotels could the same guest reasonably choose for this stay?' A defensible set makes a rate review easier to explain and reduces false alarms caused by unlike offers.
This guide is about building and auditing the set. It is separate from a rate shopper, which is the method or tool used to collect observations. SightPrice can collect selected public observations through Google Hotels monitoring, but the hotel team still decides whether two offers are comparable.
Start with the guest and the stay
Write down the stay occasion before listing properties. A two-night weekday for a business traveller may have a different competitive set from a Saturday during a local festival, a family school-holiday stay, or an airport overnight. Your property can therefore have more than one useful comparison view. Keep each view tied to a real pricing question rather than creating a large list that nobody can interpret.
Five filters for an initial set
- Location and access. Consider the route, neighbourhood, transport links and what the guest is visiting. A hotel farther away may be a closer substitute if it serves the same destination or venue.
- Property proposition. Compare category, scale, room stock and the basics a guest notices before booking. A hostel, full-service resort and compact boutique hotel should not automatically share one benchmark.
- Guest segment. Look for overlap in business, leisure, family, group or long-stay demand. A similar star label does not prove the same audience.
- Amenities and room promise. Note breakfast, parking, pool, workspace, accessibility, bed setup and the room categories actually sold.
- Price band. Use typical observed prices as a check on your selection, not as the reason to include a property. A price difference can be the result of a different product.
These criteria are consistent with the practical guidance published by SiteMinder and PriceLabs, which both describe competitive sets around comparable location, property, amenities and target guests.
Inclusion and exclusion worksheet
| Property | Decision | Reason to record |
|---|---|---|
| Harbour Boutique | Include | Similar room promise, guest segment and access to the old town |
| Central Design Hotel | Include | Comparable rooms and weekend leisure demand, although 1.5 km farther |
| Airport Lodge | Exclude | Different stay purpose and access pattern |
| Grand Palace Resort | Exclude | Different service proposition and facilities |
| New Riverside Inn | Review | Potential substitute; verify room mix and audience after opening |
The table is a decision record, not a claim about those fictional properties. Keep the reason beside each inclusion or exclusion. When a hotel changes positioning, renovation status or distribution, revisit the decision.
Normalize the offer before comparing euros
A property-level price is not automatically an equivalent room price. Set the same check-in date, length of stay and occupancy. Then match the closest room type, bed arrangement, breakfast inclusion, refundability and cancellation terms. Record taxes or fees when the source displays them consistently. Rate-shopping documentation from Hot-Tec and PriceLabs lists these dimensions because changing one can change the meaning of the comparison.
Illustrative normalized example: two adults, two nights, the same arrival date and comparable double rooms. Breakfast is added to each room-only rate below. All three offers have the same refund deadline and payment conditions. For this example only, mandatory taxes and fees are assumed to be included in the room rate; verify them separately in a real comparison.
| Offer | Nightly room rate | Two-night room total | Breakfast for 2 × 2 nights | Calculated stay total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Your hotel | €142 | €284 | €48 | €332 |
| Comparable Hotel A | €135 | €270 | €48 | €318 |
| Comparable Hotel B | €128 | €256 | €64 | €320 |
On this hypothetical basis, your total is €14 above Hotel A and €12 above Hotel B. That is a prompt to inspect room quality, location and demand context, not an automatic instruction to cut your rate. If breakfast, cancellation or occupancy is missing for one row, mark the offer not fully comparable and do not present the difference as a normalized result.
Turn each observation into a decision record
Use the following three labels in your own worksheet. They describe the evidence available, not an automatic score or a SightPrice feature.
- Comparable: the stay, room and material booking conditions are aligned. Calculate the price gap and examine it alongside your own demand.
- Comparable with an explicit adjustment: an optional item, such as breakfast, has a published price. Add it to the same stay total and show the calculation.
- Not fully comparable: the room, occupancy, cancellation terms or mandatory fees are missing or different. Keep the observation, but exclude it from a supposedly like-for-like average.
In the example, Hotel B has the lowest room-only rate but Hotel A has the lower total once breakfast is added. Your €332 total is about 4.4% above Hotel A's €318: (332 − 318) ÷ 318 × 100. That percentage describes these fictional offers only; it does not measure market demand or tell you the optimal rate.
For each observation, record the hotel, source URL, collection time and time zone, arrival and departure, guest count, room, cancellation deadline, meals, mandatory fees, total and comparison label. Keep public rates separate from member-only or mobile-only offers. If a condition cannot be verified, write “unknown”. A blank cell must never silently become zero.
Before changing your price
Check your own rooms remaining, recent bookings, cancellations and the stay's context. Public competitor prices do not provide those internal figures. Our guide to ADR, RevPAR and occupancy explains the internal indicators; our competitor price tracking guide covers the collection routine. Keep the reason for a pricing decision with the observation so you can revisit it when new information arrives.
Public availability needs careful wording
Google says hotel prices can come from partners and other web data, can vary, and should be checked for the final price. An absent result may be a confirmed unavailable offer for that query, a different filter, or a collection problem. SightPrice keeps explicit unavailability distinct from an unknown observation in its availability workflow. An explicit “unavailable” result applies to the requested dates, guests and channel. It still does not establish that every room in the property has been sold. Never convert a missing observation into an occupancy estimate.
A monthly audit checklist
- Write the stay occasion and guest segment.
- Review each property against location, proposition, audience and amenities.
- Record why each property is included, excluded or under review.
- Use one fixed query and align dates, occupancy, room and rate conditions.
- Mark missing conditions as unknown rather than filling them with assumptions.
- Recheck new openings, renovations, closures and repositioned properties.
- Save one example of what changed and the next question for the pricing meeting.
Once the set is defensible, a monitoring routine can reduce repeated searches. Use the rate report or configured alerts to focus attention, while keeping the final pricing decision with the hotel team.
Sources and limits
Google Travel Help explains how hotel prices are presented and why the final booking price should be checked. PriceLabs documentation on hotel data describes room-type matching. Sources were checked on 26 September 2026. This article develops an illustrative worksheet, not a study of actual hotel results. Public observations do not reveal a competitor's private inventory, occupancy, booking pace or revenue.