Key Takeaways
- The report commonly presents occupancy, average daily rate (ADR), revenue per available room (RevPAR), index values, rankings, and changes over time.
- Market Penetration Index, Average Rate Index, and Revenue Generation Index show relative performance; they do not explain every cause.
- Competitive-set confidentiality, participation, data sufficiency, inventory changes, and reporting rules affect interpretation.
Why It Matters to a Hotel
A hotel needs external context to distinguish a property-specific result from a market movement. Benchmarking helps leadership ask better questions about demand capture, pricing, mix, positioning, and execution.
How It Works
- Confirm the reporting period, property inventory, currency, competitive set, and data sufficiency.
- Review occupancy, ADR, and RevPAR before their index values and rankings.
- Compare daily, weekly, monthly, year-to-date, and rolling trends where available.
- Investigate events, outages, renovations, channel mix, groups, and data anomalies behind material movement.
- Record actions without disclosing confidential competitive-set information.
Process, Record, or Operating Flow
Read the hotel result, competitive-set result, index, ranking, and percentage change as separate fields. An index of 100 generally indicates parity with the comparison set for that measure; above or below 100 indicates relative position, not an automatic success or failure.
Practical Hotel Example
A fictional hotel posts higher RevPAR than last year, but its competitive set improves faster. The team separates occupancy and rate indices, checks renovation impacts and group displacement, and identifies dates where pricing or demand capture warrants review.
Department and Role Responsibilities
- Revenue management owns the method, assumptions, and recurring analysis.
- Hotel leadership connects the measure to strategy, guest value, operating capacity, and profitability.
- Sales, marketing, finance, front office, and operating departments contribute accurate inputs and act on approved decisions.
STR Report vs. Internal Hotel Report
An STR report provides aggregated external benchmarking against an approved set or market. An internal report explains the hotel’s own reservations, segments, channels, accounts, rates, costs, and operations. The reports answer different questions and work best together.
Common Mistakes
- Treating one metric as a complete explanation of hotel performance.
- Comparing periods, hotels, or segments without matching definitions and scope.
- Using gross results without considering cost, mix, capacity, or data quality.
Best Practices
- Document the formula, period, population, currency, inclusions, and exclusions.
- Reconcile source data before interpreting movement.
- Review trends with complementary revenue, cost, demand, and guest measures.
Limitations, Risks, or Exceptions
STR is a CoStar product and methodology. Report access, terms, participation, competitive-set rules, calculations, and data availability are governed by the provider. Hotels should not attempt to identify or disclose confidential competitor data.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a hotel STR report a target by itself?
No. It is one decision input and should be read with context, objectives, and complementary measures.
Can hotels compare it directly?
Only when definitions, periods, currencies, inventory, and data treatment are comparable.
Does a better result always mean more profit?
No. Revenue mix, acquisition cost, operating cost, displacement, and capital needs can change the profit outcome.
Sources and Review
CoStar — STR Benchmarking Resources and Glossary — www.costar.com/products/str-benchmark/resources/glossary
Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International — Industry Education and Resources — global.hsmai.org
Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration — sha.cornell.edu
Last reviewed: August 3, 2026. Editorial review: SalesHospitality Editorial Team. Reviewed under the SalesHospitality Knowledge Standard.
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