Resource Similarity, Market Commonality, and Spatial Distribution of Hotel Competitive Sets

Index scores and competitive sets (compsets) play a critical role in the performance and evaluation of hotels. The reliance on these metrics has drawn skepticism in recent years as competitive sets may be opportunistically chosen, creating bias in performance evaluation. Drawing from the principal–agent theory and the theory of incentives, we explore whether the distance of the competitors chosen for a hotel’s compset influences revenue per available room (RevPAR) index scores. Based on the concepts of resource similarity and market commonality, we develop a novel mathematical model through which we empirically analyze a large dataset of 10,000 compsets. We find evidence that competitor distance influences index performance and that this relationship is bidirectional. Results show that hotels that outperform the competition may use distance to inflate RevPAR indices, while those that underperform may use distance to further reduce scores. These conflicting results may be reflected from the reverse motivations of the stakeholders.