STR Report (STR)
In hotel revenue management, an STR report is a benchmarking report from Smith Travel Research comparing your occupancy, ADR and RevPAR against an anonymised competitive set, most commonly delivered as the STAR report.
Note the acronym collision before you go further. In hospitality, STR also means short-term rental, and the two appear in the same conversations constantly. This page is about the benchmarking company.
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What is an STR report?
Participating hotels submit their own performance data. In return they receive aggregated, anonymised figures for a competitive set they nominate, plus the indices that compare the two.
The STAR report is the standard format. It gives you your own occupancy, ADR and RevPAR alongside the comp set's, and the three indices derived from them: MPI for occupancy share, ARI for rate share, and RGI for revenue share. Usually with month, year-to-date and running twelve-month views, and a comparison against the same period last year.
The anonymisation is the mechanism that makes it work. You see the comp set's aggregate, never an individual property's figures, which is what allows competitors to submit honest data about each other without handing over commercial intelligence. Most schemes require a minimum number of properties in a set for exactly this reason.
What you get that rate shopping cannot give you is achieved performance. Shopped rates are asking prices. An STR report tells you what the market actually sold at and how full it actually was, which is the difference between an estimate and a measurement.
Resources: RGI · MPI · Comp set
How an STR report works in practice
The report arrives monthly and the reading routine is the same each time: headline index first, then components, then trend.
Worked example. A 46-room inn opens its October report. RevPAR $127 against a comp set at $109, so RGI 1.17. Underneath, MPI reads 0.94 and ARI 1.24. The property is achieving well above market rate and slightly below fair share of room nights, which is a rate-led position rather than a volume-led one. Running twelve months shows RGI climbing from 1.04 a year ago, so the position is strengthening.
That is the whole analysis and it takes two minutes once the habit exists. The report is not a research document. It is a monthly answer to whether you gained or lost ground.
The part most properties underuse is the comp set definition, which is theirs to nominate and theirs to get wrong. A set chosen for convenience produces indices about the wrong contest, and the report will never say so.
The part most properties overreact to is a single month. At small room counts one group booking swings the numbers. The running twelve-month column exists precisely so you have something stable to read, and it is usually the more honest line.
Resources: ARI · Market intelligence
Why benchmarking matters for independent hotels
An independent has no portfolio and no brand average to measure against. Without external data the only comparison available is your own last year, which cannot separate what you did from what the market did.
That distinction is worth real money in a bad year. An operator with no benchmark watching revenue fall assumes their pricing failed and starts discounting. An operator with a report showing RGI rising through the same decline knows they are outperforming a shrinking market and holds. Those are opposite decisions from identical raw numbers.
It also matters commercially. A lender, a buyer or a prospective partner will ask how you perform against your market, and "we had a good year" is not an answer. An index series is.
The obstacle is cost, which is genuine for a small property and is covered in the questions below.
Resources: Revenue management for independent hotels
How to use an STR report at your property
- Get the comp set right before anything else. Everything in the report is calculated against it, and you nominate it.
- Read RGI first, then always decompose into MPI and ARI. The headline says there is a question. The components say which one.
- Trust the running twelve-month column over the single month, especially under 60 rooms.
- Compare index direction to your own RevPAR direction. The four combinations each mean something different, and two of them are counterintuitive.
- Do not change your comp set to improve your numbers. It works, and it destroys the only thing the series was good for.
- Keep the reports. A two-year index series is the most credible performance evidence an independent can put in front of a lender.
What an STR report will not tell you
It cannot validate your comp set. Nominate five properties your guests never consider and the report will produce confident indices about a contest you are not in.
It reports a period that has closed. Every number describes last month, which means it informs strategy and never a rate decision for a date still on sale. Booking pace and rate shopping are the forward-looking instruments.
And it says nothing about profit. The indices count revenue, so share won by buying occupancy through high-commission channels looks identical to share won on merit.
How ampliphi approaches market position
Ampliphi is not a benchmarking service and does not replace an STR report. Competitive insight in ampliphi is a view of up to five competitors you choose, showing what they are currently charging, which is forward-looking published-rate data rather than backward-looking achieved performance.
The two answer different questions and both have a place. The report tells you whether last month went well relative to the market. The competitor view tells you what is happening to dates still on sale.
Neither feeds the everyday rate suggestion, which is demand-based and built on your own booking pace and occupancy. You approve every rate before it publishes.
Key takeaways: STR report
- A benchmarking report from Smith Travel Research comparing you to an anonymised comp set. The standard format is the STAR report.
- Not to be confused with short-term rental, which shares the acronym across hospitality.
- Gives achieved performance, which rate shopping cannot: real ADR and real occupancy, not asking prices.
- Read RGI first, then decompose into MPI and ARI. Trust the twelve-month column over the month.
- You nominate the comp set, so the report's usefulness is your responsibility.
- It scores a closed period. It cannot help you price a date still on sale.
Frequently asked questions about STR reports
Is an STR report worth it for a small independent hotel?
It depends on whether you would act differently with the data, and for many small properties the honest answer in year one is no.
If you are not yet tracking your own booking pace, not reviewing rates weekly and not clear on your comp set, a benchmarking subscription buys you a monthly report you will file. Those foundations are cheaper and matter more.
Once they exist, the report earns its cost by separating your performance from your market's, which nothing internal can do. The tipping point for most independents is when someone external starts asking how you perform against your market: a lender, an investor, a buyer, or a prospective partner.
What is the difference between an STR report and a STAR report?
STR is the company and STAR is the report. The STAR report is Smith Travel Research's core benchmarking product, so the two names are used interchangeably in practice and almost nobody distinguishes them in conversation.
If someone asks whether you "get STR data" they mean the benchmarking, whatever the product is called. Other providers publish comparable reports under their own names, and the industry tends to use "STR report" generically for all of them, much as people say hoover for vacuum cleaner.
How do I choose the comp set for my STR report?
Same rules as any comp set: four to six properties a guest would genuinely choose between instead of you. Similar rate band, similar product, same demand drivers, meaningful overlap in the search results your guests actually see.
The temptation specific to benchmarking is to include weaker properties, because it makes every index look better. It works, and it is worthless, because you end up confident about beating hotels you were never competing with while losing share to the ones that matter.
Most schemes require a minimum number of properties, often three or four besides yours, so the anonymisation holds. Write down one sentence per property explaining why it qualifies, and expect to defend that list to yourself in a year.
Are there cheaper alternatives for a small property?
Several, and they are worth exhausting before a commercial subscription.
Local hotel associations and destination marketing organisations often run benchmarking schemes for member properties at a fraction of commercial pricing, sometimes free. Coverage is narrower but for a property competing within one town that is frequently enough.
Some channel managers and property management systems now include market data drawn from their own booking flow. It is not a full benchmark and the sample is limited to their customer base, but it is directional and you may already be paying for it.
The cheapest approach is estimation: track competitors' published rates, estimate their occupancy from availability patterns, and build a rough index yourself. Crude, but a rough trend beats no comparison, and it costs a spreadsheet.
Can I use an STR report to set my rates?
Not directly, and trying to is a category error.
The report describes a month that has finished. Rates are set for dates that have not happened. By the time a soft month appears in a benchmarking report, every date in it is gone and the only available response is to change strategy for future periods.
Use it for the questions it answers: is my positioning right, is my rate premium holding, am I gaining or losing share, should I reconsider my segment mix. For the rate on a specific future date, the instruments are your own booking pace and current competitor pricing.
Related terms
RGI
Revenue Generation Index: your RevPAR divided by the comp set's. The headline index on the report, and the first number to read each month.
MPI
Market Penetration Index: your occupancy divided by the comp set's. The volume component, and the one that reveals share won by discounting.
ARI
Average Rate Index: your ADR divided by the comp set's. The rate component, and the more reliable of the two when the comp set has wide size variation.
Comp set
The properties the report benchmarks you against. You nominate them, which makes their composition the single most consequential decision in the whole subscription.
RevPAR
Room revenue divided by rooms available. The metric the headline index is built on, and the common currency that lets properties of different sizes be compared at all.