Who are your competitors?
Competitors are the listings you compete with to win guests — and for STR managers, identifying them is trickier than a quick web search. Geography, proximity, amenities, and listing content all matter, because competitors’ decisions directly affect your revenue. Knowing who they actually are, and what they’re doing, is a real marketplace advantage.
Location
Some metros pack thousands of properties into a small area; remote markets may have miles between listings. There’s no rule that defines competitors by region alone. Take San Francisco: Quibble’s data put the citywide six-month ADR at $231 — useful, but too coarse. The Outer Sunset rents ~20% below that average while Pacific Heights rents ~20% above, and that’s across a city just 7 miles by 7 miles.
Bedrooms, size, and amenities
Bedroom count is an effective filter — most travelers want a bed each, so comparing same-bedroom, same-configuration units is reasonable. But it weakens as units get larger: search results treat a bedroom filter as a minimum, so your property can appear alongside larger ones, making your real comp set bigger than you think. Amenities matter too — whether a 3-bedroom with a pool competes with the pool-less 3-bedroom down the street may depend on the season.
A data-driven decision
The more variables involved, the harder this gets — so Quibble uses machine learning. We frame the question (does a change in any property’s price or amenities affect my property’s demand?), collect vast data across an extensive set of properties, and run the algorithm continuously. As more data accrues, the impact of changes sharpens and a set of real competitors generates automatically.