Building a Competitive Set from What Guests Actually Say, Not Where You're Located
Proximity and star rating can't tell similar hotels apart. This piece lays out theme-profile matching - grouping independent hotels by the shape of their guest experience (what's strong, what's weak, and where) instead of by geography. Two hotels three towns or three countries apart can be true competitors if guests describe the same strengths and the same failure points; two hotels next door to each other with the same star rating can be complete strangers if their guest experience runs in opposite directions. The article walks through a worked example, flags the data-volume caveat that keeps the method honest, and closes with what changes day-to-day for an independent operator.
SENTEEZ
Guest Experience Insights
We've made the case already: proximity doesn't build a real competitive set, and neither does star rating. Both sort hotels by signals that can't actually tell similar properties apart.
So what does?
This is where theme-profile matching comes in - a different way to define an independent hotel competitive set, built on guest experience data instead of geography or star tier.
The core idea
Stop grouping hotels by where they sit on a map. Stop grouping them by one average score. Start grouping them by the shape of the guest experience - which parts of a stay are strong, which parts are weak, and how that pattern lines up across properties.
Two hotels with matching theme profiles are functionally comparable, full stop. It doesn't matter if they're in different towns. It doesn't matter if their star ratings are a full point apart. If guests run into the same strengths and the same failure points at both properties, those two hotels are solving - or failing to solve = the same problems.
Two hotels with the same star rating but opposite theme profiles, on the other hand, aren't really comparable at all. No matter how close together they sit on a map.
That's the whole shift. Easy to state, worth unpacking properly.
What a theme profile actually looks like
A hotel isn't one number. It's a set of scores across the recurring guest-experience themes that actually decide a hotel's reputation - cleanliness, service, food and beverage, maintenance, value for money, and the rest of the nine KPIs that matter far more than a star rating ever could.
Picture two hotels, in different towns, with a similar overall rating - both sitting around 4.2 stars. On paper, a proximity-and-rating comp set would probably pair them up.
Look at the theme profile instead, and the picture changes completely. Hotel A is strong on food and beverage - guests keep praising the restaurant, the breakfast, the bar. But it's weak on maintenance: worn carpets, slow repairs, dated bathrooms come up again and again in reviews.
Hotel B is the mirror image. Rooms feel fresh and well-kept, and maintenance scores high. But the food and beverage program is inconsistent - guests mention slow service, limited menus, meals that don't leave much of an impression.
Same overall rating. Opposite guest experience. A rating-based comp set would call these two hotels equivalent. They're not - they're solving completely different problems for completely different reasons, and neither one is learning anything useful by watching the other.
Now flip the example. Somewhere else entirely - a different town, a different price point, maybe even a different country - there's a third hotel. Call it Hotel C. Its theme profile matches Hotel A almost exactly: strong food and beverage, weak maintenance, same underlying issue.
Geography would never have put these two hotels in the same conversation. Theme-profile matching does - and it's the right pairing, because Hotel C is facing the exact same guest-experience challenge Hotel A is. That's a real competitor. That's a real peer to learn from.
Why this produces a more honest comp set
Theme-profile matching answers the question that actually matters: which hotels are solving - or failing to solve - the same guest-experience problems you are?
That question has nothing to do with distance. A hotel three towns away with your exact strengths and weaknesses is a more useful competitive reference than the hotel next door with a completely different guest experience.
It also rules out the false comparisons. The neighbor with a similar star rating but the opposite profile was never really your competition. Benchmarking against it just tells you things that don't apply to your actual guests.
This holds beyond any single hotel or region, too. The same matching logic works regardless of market - a theme profile built from Dubai Marina data behaves the same way as one built from Lake Geneva data. The method isn't tied to a location. It's tied to guest experience itself, which is exactly why it works as a genuine alternative to geography in the first place.
The honesty check this method needs
Theme-profile matching is only as good as the data behind it. A theme built on two reviews isn't a signal - it's noise wearing a percentage sign.
This is where rigor has to hold. If a hotel doesn't have enough review volume behind a given theme, the honest move is to flag it - "insufficient data," or "n=2, preliminary" - rather than presenting a number with confidence it hasn't earned.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. A comp set built on a shaky number is worse than no comp set at all, because it looks trustworthy while quietly being wrong. Real theme-profile matching has to be willing to say "we don't know yet" when the data doesn't support a claim.
What this changes for an independent operator
Here's the practical shift. Instead of asking "who's near me" or "who's rated like me," an independent operator now has a sharper question available: which hotels share my theme profile, regardless of where they are?
That question unlocks a few things.
Sharper benchmarking - you're comparing yourself to hotels actually facing your problems, not hotels that happen to share your zip code.
A clearer read on real threats versus cosmetic ones - if your real competitive set also struggles with maintenance, that's a market-wide pattern, not necessarily your fastest fix. If your real competitive set has solved it and you haven't, that's where the gap actually is.
A better source of ideas - watching a true peer fix a shared problem is useful. Watching a geographic neighbor with a totally different guest experience fix a problem you don't even have isn't.
Your competitive set was never a place
It was never about the map. It was a pattern in guest experience all along - and now, for the first time, that pattern is something an independent operator can actually see and measure.
That raises the obvious next question. Branded hotels lean on an STR report to operationalize their competitive set. Independent operators don't have that report. So how does an operator actually put theme-profile matching into practice day to day, without a ready-made system behind it?
That's worth its own answer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Key answers regarding hospitality sentiment diligence and data methodology.
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Written by SENTEEZ
Guest Experience Insights
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