The Competitive Set, mostly known in the profession as the comp set, is the group of similar properties to our establishment and which, due to that, usually are the direct competitors of our hotel. First of all, we have to notice that they will not necessarily be the closest hotels, located in the same area or those which have the same kind of segments. We have to analyse other parameters like the location, the Brand, the type of product or the daily rate.
Many hotel owners ask for how they would select their comp set establishments and, for that, it is fundamental to know the own product and what are the differentiating values of itself, like the location, the capacity, the rooms’ typology, the customer segmentation, etc.
What is that makes me different or similar to my comp set?
For this analysis, we are going to study the different factors that will help us to choose which will be the ultimate competition? As experts on revenue, in thinkIN we are going to detail the most important ones:
- Location. This factor is important beacuse not all the customers are looking for the same location depending on their interests. This is one of the determinants that resolve the purchase.
- Category: Despite the fact that this is not a decisive factor, it actually can be determining because it concerns significantly on the booking decision.
- Establishment capacity: We will try to compare ourselves with similar kind of capacities. If we have 150 rooms and we want to compete against a 25 rooms hotel, the comp set will never bi the right one, cause the sale can’t be the same.
- Room typology: we must check hotels that own similar room to ours in order to compare the same kind of product.
- Installations and facilities: Rooms are not everything. We have to have in mind the kind of services that offer the others.
- Kind of target: If we go to adults only, families, customers who want sports and entertainment, etc… we will be more able to segment the clients as we need.
- Sales channels: It will be necessary to check the sales channels to know if we can add a new niche in our sales strategies. This is how we’ll avoid to forget some trends that hotels can’t see, but they are truly able to influence in the prices.
- Marketing and sales strategies: We must analyze what are the actions that our competitor are doing in order to know what can we adopt and integrate in our property.
- Online reputation: as we have seen in the past, the guests’ reviews in the different sale channels and metasearches are able to frustrate sale decisions.
The analysis of all these factors will give us a clear visión about which hotels are going to be our direct competitors. We can find many hotels that can enter on this category, but in an ideal stage, we will choose a maxim of 10. All those that have more affinity with us, base don all the factors that we have described through this article, will be the chosen ones.
