Most Indian hotel owners know roughly who their competitors are. Very few have a defined competitive set — a specific list of 4 to 6 properties used systematically for rate benchmarking, review tracking, and demand monitoring. Here is exactly how to build one and what to do with it.
A competitive set (comp set) is a defined list of 4–6 hotels that a guest would genuinely consider booking instead of yours. It is the reference group against which you benchmark your rates, review scores, and OTA positioning — not a list of all hotels in your destination, and not simply the properties nearest to you geographically.
The most common comp set error Indian hotel operators make is defining it too broadly. "All 3-star hotels in Rishikesh" is not a competitive set — it is a market segment. The hotels in your competitive set should be properties where a guest choosing between your hotel and the comp set member is making a genuine either/or decision based on comparable quality, location, price, and guest profile.
Your competitive set is the group of hotels a specific guest type would compare you against. A 4.2-rated boutique resort at Rs 5,500 ADR does not compete with a Rs 2,200 budget guesthouse even if they are in the same destination. They serve completely different guests at completely different decision moments.
1. Similar star rating (within one category): Your competitive set should be within one star category of your property — a 3-star hotel competes with other 3-star and occasionally 2-star or 4-star properties. Guests making price-vs-quality decisions are doing so within a category, not across wide quality tiers.
2. Similar location (within the same destination zone): For hill station properties — within the same tourist zone, not just the same district. A hotel in central Mussoorie competes differently from one 4km outside town even at the same star rating. For city business hotels — within 3km of the same commercial or transit hub. Define "same location" by where your target guest would consider staying, not by administrative boundaries.
3. Similar room count (within 50% of yours): A 12-room boutique property and a 120-room resort in the same destination are not meaningful comp set members for each other. Their cost structures, OTA visibility, and pricing dynamics are fundamentally different. Stay within a band where the operational context is genuinely comparable.
4. Similar target guest profile: A business hotel and a leisure resort in the same destination are not meaningful competitors — they serve guests with different purposes, different booking windows, and different price sensitivities. Your comp set should share the same primary guest type — leisure family, honeymoon couple, pilgrimage group, corporate traveller.
5. Similar ADR range (within 25%): If your ADR is Rs 5,000, your competitive set should be properties in the Rs 3,750–6,250 range. Outside this range, the guest making a rate comparison is not the same guest who would book your property at your standard rate.
MakeMyTrip is the most useful platform for building and monitoring your Indian hotel competitive set because it represents the primary booking channel for most Indian domestic travellers and provides the most data visible without extranet access.
Step 1: Search MakeMyTrip for your destination on a standard weekend date (not a holiday) with your typical guest profile (2 adults, 1 room). Note which properties appear consistently in the first 10–15 results.
Step 2: Filter the results to match your star category and review score range (within 0.5 stars of your current score). The properties that remain after this filter are your natural competitive set candidates — they appear for the same searches, at similar quality signals.
Step 3: Review each candidate against your 5 criteria above. Remove any that fail on location, room count, guest profile, or ADR range. What remains — typically 4–7 properties — is your competitive set.
Step 4: Document the competitive set in a simple spreadsheet: property name, MakeMyTrip ID, current review score, room count, ADR range, and the date you defined the set. This becomes your baseline.
Step 5: Bookmark each comp set property's MakeMyTrip listing for easy weekly rate checking. Most revenue management tools (including NetShine AI Price Intelligence) allow you to specify your competitive set and will monitor their rates automatically.
1. Current rates on the next 3 high-demand dates: What is each comp set member charging for the coming weekend, the next public holiday, and the next regional event? If your rate is more than 15% above the competitive set average on those dates without a clear quality justification, you are at risk of losing conversion to lower-priced alternatives. If your rate is more than 10% below the competitive set average, you are leaving revenue on the table.
2. Availability on high-demand dates: When comp set members start showing "limited rooms" or "sold out" on specific dates, that is a demand signal worth acting on. If 3 of your 5 comp set members are sold out for the coming long weekend and you still have 8 rooms available, you should be raising your rate — demand is clearly stronger than your current pricing assumes.
3. Review score movement: Check each comp set member's MakeMyTrip score monthly. A competitor dropping from 4.3 to 4.0 over 3 months is weakening — their ranking will follow, and the guests who would have chosen them over you will start converting at your property instead. This is a moment to hold rate (or even test a modest increase) rather than compete on price.
The most common mistake in competitive rate response is matching a competitor's discount. When a comp set member drops their weekend rate from Rs 5,500 to Rs 4,800, the instinct is to drop to Rs 4,700. This destroys margin for both properties without necessarily improving your conversion.
More effective responses:
Your competitive set is not permanent. Review and update it every 6 months or when a significant market change occurs — a new property opening in your destination that matches your profile, a competitor closing or repositioning, or your own property making a significant quality upgrade that moves you into a different competitive tier.
The most common trigger for competitive set updates at Indian independent hotels: a new OYO-branded property or a branded budget chain (Treebo, FabHotels) opening in your destination that undercuts on price. These properties should generally not be in your competitive set — they compete on price with guests you are not trying to attract, and monitoring their rates will pull your pricing decisions in the wrong direction. Keep your comp set focused on properties competing for the same quality-seeking guest, not the price-minimising guest.
Live competitor rate tracking, pickup monitoring, and automatic rate recommendations — no manual checking needed.
