Introduction

The hotels.com® Hotel Price Index™ (HPI™) is a regular survey of hotel prices in major city destinations across the world. The HPI is based on bookings made on hotels.com and prices shown are those actually paid by customers (rather than advertised rates) for the first half of 2011. The report largely compares prices paid in 2010 with prices paid in 2011.

Now in its eighth year, the HPI^™ is respected as the definitive report on hotel prices paid around the world and increasingly used as a reference tool by media, hoteliers, analysts, tourism bodies and academics.

The HPI^TM tracks the real prices paid per room by hotels.com customers around the world using a weighted average based on the number of rooms sold in each of the markets that hotels.com operates in.
Approximately 125,000 properties in more than 19,000 global locations make up the sample set of hotels from which prices are taken.

The international scale of hotels.com (in terms of both customers and destinations) makes the Hotel Price Index one of the most comprehensive benchmarks available, as it incorporates both chain and independent hotels, as well as options such as self-catering and bed and breakfast properties.

In the U.S., approximately 70% of hotel rooms booked are in chain properties. In Europe however, approximately 25% of hotel rooms are part of a chain, the remainder are in independent properties.