Competition: prices and head to head

To see where you stand against the hotels you really compete with. It has two tabs:
- Prices: a summary card, a bar to choose the dates, Above or below you, At a glance: them vs you, Your price on each booking site, Price changes, Seasons ahead and Market signals. The ⚙ My competitors (…) button at the top right opens the list where you choose the hotels to compare with.
- Head to head: a scorecard against each competitor you chose, the Heads-up alerts of the last weeks, How you compare (✦ AI), what guests talk about in each hotel’s reviews, Google search interest and the searches for your competitors’ names where your website appears.

While no competitor is chosen, Prices opens on My competitors.

In Competition → Prices, open ⚙ My competitors. Under Hotels nearby, choose a radius (3, 5, 8, 15 or 25 km; 8 km by default) and click Find competitors near me. Hotelmente searches Google for hotels, resorts, bed and breakfasts, inns, guest houses, aparthotels, motels and hostels around your location. Private vacation rentals and places with fewer than 10 Google reviews are left out, because they rarely compete with a hotel. It also finds your own Google listing, shown under Your competitive set.

Above the list:
- List or Map, to see the hotels as rows or as pins.
- Search by name.
- Type: hotel, resort, B&B, inn, guest house, aparthotel, motel or hostel.
- Google rating: 4.0+, 4.3+, 4.5+ or 4.7+.
- Price level on Google: $ to $$$$.
- Stars: the official class from Google Hotels, shown when at least one hotel has one.
- Distance: up to 1, 3, 5 or 10 km.
- Sort by Best match, Closest, Highest rated, Most reviews or Name.

The line below says how many hotels match, for example Showing 12 of 40 hotels nearby.

Each nearby hotel gets a similarity score out of 100:
- Distance, up to 30 points: closer is more comparable.
- Google rating close to yours, up to 30 points.
- Same Google price level, up to 25 points.
- Similar number of reviews (similar size and visibility), up to 15 points.

Best match sorts the list by that score, and the 10 best are tagged Recommended. It is a starting point: only you know which hotels your guests really compare you with.

• ✓ Competitor adds the hotel to Your competitive set.
• ✕ No says it is not a competitor: the hotel leaves the list for good and moves to Removed hotels (…), at the bottom of My competitors. It stays out even after a new search, until you click Restore.
• Remove from set, on a hotel in Your competitive set, puts it back in the list of hotels nearby.

When you are done, click Done: see prices → to go back to the prices view.

Click Map above the list. Your hotel, your competitors and the other hotels nearby appear as pins in different colours on an OpenStreetMap map, zoomed to fit them all. Drag to move and use + and − to zoom. Click a pin to see the hotel’s distance from you and its Google rating, with ✓ Competitor and ✕ No buttons and a Map ↗ link to Google Maps. The filters above also apply to the map.

The name, the distance from your hotel in km, the Google rating and number of reviews, the Google price level ($ to $$$$), the type (hotel, resort, B&B…), the official star class when Google Hotels lists one, the Recommended tag for the best matches, a Map ↗ link that opens it in Google Maps and the ✓ Competitor and ✕ No buttons.

Pick the hotels a guest would really weigh against yours: similar location, style and price. Three to eight usually give a reliable picture. More is fine, but every price check covers each of them, and a competitor that does not appear in Google’s results for an area needs a search of its own.

Yes. Once you choose competitors, the Prices tab compares your price with theirs on Google Hotels:
- For the dates you choose with the period bar, up to 7 nights at a time.
- For the next 6 months, in Seasons ahead, refreshed automatically every week.

Each comparison uses the lowest public price for 1 night and 2 adults, and your own price for the same night.

From Google Hotels, the price comparison guests see on Google Search and Maps. Hotelmente reads it through its own SerpApi account, so there is nothing for you to set up or pay separately. Prices are captured in US dollars and converted to your currency with the daily exchange rates.

“Your price” is the lowest standard rate above zero loaded in Cloudbeds for that night, ignoring derived rates, the same price the Pricing page uses. In Market signals, the row Competitor prices and sold-out dates shows Live (SerpApi · Google Hotels) when it is on for your hotel.

For the dates you compared (or, before you compare any, the nights of the weekly season check):
- A headline such as You are above 3 and below 2 of your 5 competitors with prices, and how your typical competitor compares with you.
- Your price: your average over the nights checked.
- Typical competitor: the median of your competitors’ average prices, with ▲ or ▼ and how far from you.
- Cheaper than you: how many competitors with a price are below you.
- Sold out: the share of competitor nights with no rooms for sale.

Up to three alerts follow: a booking site selling you cheaper than your own website, a night when half or more of your competitors are sold out (hold or raise your price), a competitor more than 20% cheaper on average, or the latest price change. Click an alert to jump to its details.

Use the bar under the summary card:
- Pick a shortcut: Next weekend (the coming Friday and Saturday), Next 7 days, Next 30 days or Next 90 days, or set your own From → To dates.
- Click Compare prices.

Hotelmente checks up to 7 nights, spread evenly over the period, always including the first and the last night. The line next to the dates says how many nights it will check, the most searches it can use and how many are left this month. It takes about 20 seconds per night; the page updates by itself when the prices are in. The new comparison replaces the previous one.

One line per competitor: its lowest public price against your lowest rate, 1 night, 2 adults, averaged over the nights checked.
- ▲ 12% above you: it charges more than you.
- ▼ 8% below you: it charges less.
- = Same as you: within 5%.
- Sold out: no price on any night because it had no rooms for sale.
- No price found: Google showed no price for it.

Under each name you see its average price, how many nights it was sold out and where it was cheapest, for example cheapest on Booking.com or on their own website. The time of the check is shown at the top.

A grid with one row per competitor and one column per night, with your price under each date. Each cell compares that competitor with you on that night:
- ▲ and a percentage in blue: they charge more than you.
- ▼ and a percentage in red: they charge less than you.
- = : about the same (within 5%).
- Sold out: no rooms for sale that night.
- —: no price found.

Stronger colours mark big gaps. The last row, Competitors sold out, counts how many were sold out each night, for example 3 / 5. On a phone the grid scrolls sideways.

Google Hotels lists your own hotel on several booking sites. For each night checked, this table shows your price on your own website (or your Cloudbeds rate when Google shows no official site) and your price on each booking site, with the difference.

Red means a site sells you more than 2% cheaper than your own website. Guests who compare on Google then book there, and you pay the commission. Check the rate, discounts and promotions loaded for that site in your channel manager or its extranet. This is called rate parity.

What your competitors changed since the check before, for the same nights: a price up or down by 5% or more (with the old and the new price), a hotel that sold out, or one that has rooms again (Open again). The biggest changes come first, up to 12. After the first check it says No changes yet, because each check is compared with the one before it.

A comparison over the next 6 months, split into three blocks of about two months. In each block Hotelmente checks a Tuesday and a Saturday near the middle, so you see a weekday and a weekend.
- Each block is labelled peak, high or green season from your own occupancy on the same dates last year, compared with your yearly average.
- A one-line takeaway says whether you are above, in line with or below the market median, and whether you are the cheapest, in the middle or the most expensive of your set (when at least 3 competitors have a price).
- Bars show each competitor against you for each night; See the numbers opens the table with every price and the market median.

It is refreshed automatically every week. Refresh prices checks again now; the line next to it says how many searches it uses and how many are left this month.

When Google Hotels knows a hotel but shows no price for a night, the hotel has no rooms for sale that night, so Hotelmente counts it as sold out (it may also be closed). Sold-out competitors are one of the clearest demand signals you can get: when half or more of your set is sold out on a date, the summary card suggests holding or raising your price, because the guests still looking have fewer places to go.

For each night, the middle price of all the hotels Google Hotels shows in your area, not only your chosen competitors, and never your own hotel. Half the hotels are cheaper and half more expensive. A median is used instead of an average so that one luxury resort or one very cheap hostel does not pull the picture. It appears in See the numbers, in the takeaways of Seasons ahead, and it is what Social Media uses to price an offer below the market.

Yes. Each Google Hotels search counts against a monthly search budget that Hotelmente sets. One search for a night prices most of the market; a competitor missing from those results costs one more. The period bar and Seasons ahead show how many searches are left this month. The weekly check never uses more than its share, so you can still compare your own dates.

When the budget runs out, the message No competitor-price searches left this month appears; the prices already captured stay on the page and the budget starts again the next calendar month.

• Pricing: select dates in the price calendar and click Check competitor prices.
• Social Media → Create & schedule: in the campaign composer, Check competitor prices recalculates the offer 3% to 5% below the market median for those dates, never under your floor.
• Ask Hotelmente: ask How am I doing against my competitors? and it answers from your last comparison and the seasons ahead.

From Pricing and Social Media the check covers the first night of your dates, used as the market for the whole stay.

A few usual reasons:
- Hotelmente compares 1 night for 2 adults; longer stays, other party sizes or member prices can differ.
- Prices change during the day; the time of each check is shown.
- Google may show prices with or without taxes and fees depending on the country and the site.
- Prices are converted from US dollars with the daily exchange rate.
- Your price is your lowest standard rate in Cloudbeds, which can differ from what your website shows with a discount or a package.

The search starts from the latitude and longitude of your property in Cloudbeds. If they are missing, Hotelmente cannot search around you. Add the coordinates to your property in Cloudbeds, click Sync now, then try again.

Your listing is found by searching Google for your hotel name and city near your coordinates. If the name in Cloudbeds differs a lot from your Google listing, the match can fail or pick a neighbour. Make the name and city in Cloudbeds match your Google listing, sync and click Find competitors near me again. If it still fails, write to us from the contact page.

No. Google Places and the competitor prices from Google Hotels are services Hotelmente runs for you. If the page shows one of those messages, the service is still being set up for your account and switches on by itself. You do not need your own Google or SerpApi key.

Start with 8 km. In a city, 3 or 5 km usually finds enough similar hotels; in a beach town or rural area, 15 or 25 km may be needed. You can search again with another radius at any time: hotels you already chose or removed keep their status.

Besides prices, it feeds the Head to head tab, and your Google rating and number of reviews are listed next to your competitors’ in Reviews, under Your rating next to your competitors (Refresh ratings updates them). Ask Hotelmente also uses the set to answer questions about your competitors.

No. Hotelmente only reads public information from Google Places and Google Hotels, the same prices any traveller sees. Nothing is sent to the hotels in your competitive set, and your list is visible only to your own team.

Owners and managers can choose and remove competitors, restore removed hotels, compare prices, refresh them, update competitor data and run the AI brief. Viewers (Solo lectura) see both tabs and My competitors but cannot change anything or run a check.

On Head to head, competitors’ Google and TripAdvisor ratings, reviews and websites are read again every month, and the heads-up check runs every week. In Reviews, Refresh ratings reads the current Google rating and review count of your hotel and every chosen competitor right away. Each place shows the date of its last update.

Your hotel against each competitor you chose in Prices → ⚙ My competitors, on everything Hotelmente can measure: Google rating and review count, TripAdvisor rating and rank, new reviews in the last 90 days, the average price and sold-out nights from Google Hotels, whether their own website sells cheapest, their website score and phone speed, and what guests talk about in their reviews. It needs at least one competitor chosen.

Click Update competitor data once. Hotelmente reads each competitor’s Google and TripAdvisor listing and newest reviews, runs the same website check it runs on yours and measures their phone speed with Google PageSpeed. It takes about a minute. After that it refreshes every month by itself (about one search per competitor), and prices come from the checks in the Prices tab.

One row per hotel, yours first, with the distance of each competitor. The columns: Google ★, Reviews, TripAdvisor ★, TripAdvisor rank, New reviews (90 days), Average price for the dates checked on Google Hotels, $ per ★ (price for each rating star, a quick value-for-money measure), Sold out, Own website cheapest (the share of dates where the hotel’s own website had the lowest price on Google), Website score, Phone speed, Hotel schema and Spanish version. Green marks the best in each column.

What changed at your competitors, checked every week: a price move of 15% or more for a date, a competitor that sold out, a change in its Google rating or TripAdvisor rank, a burst of new Google reviews, a new hotel on Google Hotels near you, local news that mentions a competitor, and more people searching a competitor’s name on Google. When nothing important changed, the panel says so.

Click Analyze with AI and, in about 30 seconds, the AI compares prices, reviews, websites and searches for each competitor. For each one you get You beat them and They beat you, with the numbers behind them, and then What to do: a short list of concrete actions. The brief is saved with its date; click Analyze again after new data comes in.

What guests talk about lists, for each hotel, the topics Google finds in its reviews and how many reviews mention each one. Topic scores comes from Google Hotels: for each topic, such as location, service, cleanliness, rooms or food, the share of positive mentions in each hotel’s reviews, with the number of mentions in brackets. Green is the best in the row. A topic where competitors score well and you do not is a clear thing to work on.

• Google search interest: how much people search each hotel’s name on Google over the last 12 months, from Google Trends (100 = the highest week). Rising interest often shows before bookings do. Small hotels may have too few searches to measure.
• People searching for your competitors who see you: Google searches that include a competitor’s name where your website also appeared, from Search Console over 28 days. These guests are already comparing. It needs Search Console connected in Website SEO.