Transparency
Savings Index Methodology
The HotelsNearMe Savings Index publishes apples-to-apples comparisons between the lowest publicly available online travel agency (OTA) prices we observe and verified HotelsNearMe member rates for the same property, dates, and room type whenever possible.
What we compare
For each hotel in the benchmark set, we record:
- Google Hotels OTA price — the lowest booking-option price shown on Google Hotels for matching search criteria (currently sourced from google_hotels).
- HotelsNearMe / bestdeals price — the lowest nightly room rate on bestdeals.hotelsnearme.com for the same hotel, dates, and occupancy.
- Savings percent — calculated as
(OTA − HNM) / OTA × 100.
Search parameters
Unless noted for a specific row, comparisons use:
- Advance booking — 2-night stay, check-in 2026-08-13 (21 days from report date), check-out 2026-08-15
- 2 adult guests
- Identical check-in and check-out dates per comparison row
- lowest available comparable room
Benchmark hotel set
The capture pool follows a U.S. News Top 100–stylecollection of America's most sought-after hotels — referencing the ranking category for hotel selection only; HotelsNearMe is not affiliated with or endorsed by U.S. News & World Report. The published daily list and feeds show the top 50 hotels by savings % among hotels with both a Google Hotels OTA price and a HotelsNearMe price for the comparison dates. Incomplete or pending captures stay in the full dataset but are omitted from the public table and summary stats.
Update frequency
Comparisons are captured at the timestamp shown on each row and summarized on the daily index page. Hotel pricing changes throughout the day; published rows reflect the prices observed at capture time.
What we claim (and don't)
We publish observed comparisons against major OTAs. We do not claim HotelsNearMe is always the cheapest option for every hotel, date, or room type worldwide. Our published language focuses on verified lowest public prices in our benchmark comparisons.
Machine-readable data
The index is available for researchers, journalists, and automated systems:
- JSON API — structured report with summary statistics
- CSV download — one row per hotel comparison
To submit updated daily data during the pilot, replace data/price-index/latest.json or provide a CSV matching the export format.