Aparthotel pricing strategy: competing with hotels and Airbnbs at once

A two-night guest walks past your aparthotel and books the hotel next door. A three-week guest does the same math and books the Airbnb across the street. Two lost bookings, two different competitors, two different pricing logics behind them.

That is the core problem of pricing an aparthotel. You are running two businesses through the same rooms: a short-stay business that behaves like a hotel, and a long-stay business that behaves like a short-term rental. Price only against hotels and you miss what the apartment down the street is doing to your extended-stay demand. Price only against short-term rentals and you leave money on the table every time a two-night guest is comparing you to a branded hotel.

Why aparthotel pricing is different

Take a 40-unit aparthotel in Birmingham. The same unit needs a rate for a weekend two-night stay, priced against nearby hotels charging by the room-night. It also needs a rate for a three-week corporate stay, priced against furnished apartments charging by the week or month.

Same unit, same calendar, two different comp sets, two different pricing questions. It's the same tension covered in the serviced apartment vs hotel debate, just playing out inside a single property instead of across two. This article covers how to price both sides at once: which comp set to track, how much weight to give hotel data versus short-term rental data, and how to price for length of stay instead of just the night.

See both markets before you price

Before you can weight anything, you need visibility into both markets side by side, not two tools or two browser tabs. Guests are already comparing short-term rentals against hotel rooms on price, space, and flexibility. Your pricing setup should be doing the same comparison.

What the Hotel Rate Shopper tracks

PriceLabs' Hotel Rate Shopper tracks up to 350 nearby hotels and short-term rentals for comparison, refreshed daily from Booking.com data. You can auto-select your 10 nearest hotel competitors, or hand-pick your own comp set using filters like distance, star rating, review score, unit count, and average price.

• If a hotel you picked lacks pricing data on a given date, PriceLabs automatically fills the gap with a nearby hotel matching your filters
• You can select competitors from a list, a map, or by searching a property name directly

Comparing apples to apples

The comparison has gotten more precise recently. You can filter competitor rates by length of stay (1 to 4 nights), by refundability, and by whether breakfast is included, so you are comparing equivalent offers instead of a bare property-level average.

Complete room-type matching for a competitor once (your Deluxe Room against their Superior Room, for example) and the comparison shifts from a generic property-wide rate to that specific room type. That matters for an aparthotel, where a studio and a two-bedroom unit should never be priced off the same comp.

One honest limit worth knowing: the hotel comparison is based on Booking.com public rates for a 2-night stay at double occupancy. It is a benchmarking tool, not a live feed from a competitor's PMS.

Decide the mix: hotel weights

Once you can see both comp sets, the real decision is how much each one should influence your price. Most aparthotels get this wrong in one of two directions: ignoring hotel pricing because they think of themselves as a short-term rental operator, or ignoring short-term rental pricing because the property has a front desk.

PriceLabs lets you set exactly how much of your pricing algorithm pulls from hotel data versus short-term rental data, on a five-point scale (see table below).

For a closer look at how these settings interact with your comp set, see Understanding Custom Compsets for Hotel Pricing.

Which end of the scale is right depends on your actual guest mix, not on how you describe the property on paper. Mostly two- and three-night stays booked the way a hotel room gets booked: weight toward Hotel. Mostly week-plus stays booked the way an apartment gets booked: weight toward STR. A true hybrid, front-desk service with a meaningful share of extended stays, is exactly the case Balance was built for.

Your account's starting point on this scale depends on how your property is set up in PriceLabs, so check your own Customize Pricing Data Source setting rather than assuming a default. Treat whatever it currently shows as a starting point to adjust, not a verdict on your business.

Setup note: Hotel Weights and Hotel Compsets are by-request features. If you do not see these options in your account, email [email protected] to request access.

Set your hotel comp set on purpose

Hotel Weights controls how much hotel data influences your price. Hotel Compsets controls which hotels count as "hotel data" in the first place, and getting this wrong quietly undermines everything above it.

By default, PriceLabs pulls from your 10 nearest hotels. If you have specific competitors in mind, hotels you actually lose bookings to, or want to exclude a budget motel that skews your average down, hand-pick your comp set through Hotel Data instead. If your picks run short on data for a given date, PriceLabs fills the gap using proximity and any star-rating filters you have already applied.

For an aparthotel, this is worth setting up deliberately rather than leaving on default. A property with a strong boutique brand competing against three specific comparable properties gets a sharper price than one benchmarked against whatever ten hotels happen to be closest.

Price the stay length, not just the night

Weighting your comp sets correctly gets you the right price for a single night. It does not automatically get you the right price for a stay.

• Minimum stays matter more here than in a typical hotel
• Orphan-day gaps, the one- or two-night holes between longer bookings, need a deliberate strategy, since aparthotels are more likely to want to fill those gaps with short stays instead of discounting them away by default
• Weekly and monthly positioning needs its own pricing tier, not a nightly rate multiplied out, since a guest booking three weeks is shopping against monthly furnished-apartment listings, not a hotel's rack rate times 21

This is where the hotel-weight decision above pays off: a well-weighted comp set tells you the right price level, and stay-length rules turn that price level into the right price for the booking actually in front of you. For more on structuring minimum stays and competitor-based pricing together, see Hotel Pricing Strategies: 8 Approaches Revenue Managers Use.

What this means for your aparthotel

Pricing an aparthotel well means treating it as two overlapping businesses instead of picking a side. Track both comp sets. Set your Hotel Weight based on actual guest mix. Choose a hotel comp set on purpose. Build stay-length rules around the fact that a two-night guest and a three-week guest are shopping in two different markets, even though they're booking the same room.

Debraj Bandopadhyay, Associate Director at Lumina Stays in Australia (115 apartments), can manage over 100 listings on one screen while fine-tuning his strategy by comparing against both hotel and Airbnb pricing at once. George Balogh, owner of Hi5 Apartments in Hungary (250+ units), runs his portfolio the same way, letting the engine react to demand, local events, and seasonality in real time while he sets the rules that decide how much weight each market gets.

Ready to see it on your own portfolio? Start a free trial and set up your comp sets and hotel weight from day one.

Frequently asked questions

How should aparthotels set prices?

Track both a hotel comp set and a short-term rental comp set, then set a Hotel Weight that matches your actual guest mix rather than defaulting to one side. Layer stay-length rules (minimum stays, orphan-day handling, weekly and monthly pricing) on top so short and long bookings are each priced against the right market.

Do aparthotels compete with Airbnb or hotels?

Both, usually at the same time. Short stays tend to compete against hotel rooms, while longer stays compete against short-term rental and extended-stay listings. Most aparthotels need a pricing setup that accounts for both rather than choosing one comp set.

How do I price serviced apartments for long stays?

Price weekly and monthly stays as their own tier rather than multiplying a nightly rate, since long-stay guests are comparing you to furnished-apartment and extended-stay listings priced by the week or month, not to a hotel's nightly rack rate.

What is hybrid pricing in hospitality?

Hybrid pricing blends hotel market data and short-term rental market data in a single pricing algorithm, with an adjustable weighting between the two. It is built for properties, like aparthotels, that draw guests comparison-shopping against both kinds of accommodation.