How representative is your STR competitive set?
In this economic climate, hotels are looking everywhere for new demand sources. Customers, likewise, are considering different hotels than they had in the past because of tighter budgets, adjusted travel needs and different pricing strategies of hotels. Generally speaking, it is not wise to change a Smith Travel Research competitive set during shifts in the market, as value is derived from gauging how the subject hotel indices change over time versus its competitive set. However, given the radical adjustments to the economic conditions of many markets with differing opinions on when the economy will recover, closely looking at that competitive set or looking at the behavior of other competitive sets might be prudent.
