Do you benchmark your STR against the market or against yourself?

Question

Curious what other hosts think about this.

We’ve tried using AirDNA and similar tools to gain more insights into our listings’ performance but came up empty.

I find myself obsessing more about our own year-over-year numbers e.g. this February vs last February or this years booking pacing vs last years booking pacing.

Market data tells us what we already know: we are top tier and our listings don’t fit in the regular market trends. I have the feeling our own historical data tells us if we’re actually on track or not.

Note: we are in a non US market in Tbilisi Georgia 🇬🇪.

John Underwood · Answer

I make all my money on my portfolio of LTR's and my vacation rentals are for fun so I don't sweat their performance. I only look at their income at the end of the year and I'm still happy with them.

Shelby Pracht · Answer

I think it's really smart for you to compare against your own prior performance- when you are outperforming the rest of the market (not hard to do if you are paying attention) then comparing against the rest of the market will feel like a nice pat on the back, but not super useful information. I normally try to keep in mind year over year changes that will affect my numbers though (abnormal weather, road closures, political or economic situations, etc etc)

Michael Baum · Answer

I do both. I watch others and make sure I stay competitive.

Jon Martin · Answer

If I'm outperforming most of the similar bedroom count properties in my market then I'm good with that. There were 4 comps that I started watching when I bought my last property, and now mine plus 3 of those comps still come up in the top of the search results for that head count. I'll take it. If those comps were not performing well I would actually be somewhat concerned.

When there are properties that outperform me that are clearly superior when considering location, head count and amenity offerings then I am good with that too. It's actually encouraging because it shows that there is still demand for something more expensive than what I have to offer.

Andrew Steffens · Answer

I manage a portfolio of about 60 units and we compare each units weekly against their market/market segment to see how we and the individual units are performing. For this we use LSI Tools

Andrew A. · Answer

I guess that is one way of looking at it - but not everybody is in it just for fun :) Some people also look at the data just for fun but don't do anything with it...

Do you benchmark your STR against the market or against yourself?

Do you benchmark your STR against the market or against yourself?

Most Popular Reply

6 Replies