This week in hotel prices

1. 1. 578 of 834 hotels had a listing 5% or more below the going rate

   In the October 1, 2026 snapshot, 578 of the 834 hotels with a price (69.3%) had at least one booking site listing the stay 5% or more below the going rate, the rate most sites agreed on. Where one did, the median gap was 15.2%, about $21 a night before taxes and fees. In the 13 earlier snapshots (each run counted on its own) the share ranged from 61.2% to 80.8%; this snapshot was inside that range.

2. 2. Super.com had the lowest price most often

   Among the 578 hotels with a listing 5% or more below the going rate, Super.com had the lowest price at 144 (24.9%), then Vio.com at 61 and the hotel's own site at 58. At 464 of the 578 (80.3%), the cheapest listing named no room, so its price alone does not say which room it buys.

3. 3. At 26% of hotels, another site listed free cancellation for the same price or less

   At 217 of 834 hotels, the lowest rate on at least one of Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com or Agoda had no free cancellation while another site listed free cancellation for the same price or less (within 2%). The label is the one Google Hotels showed; the deadline and terms are on each site. More: is free cancellation worth it?

4. 4. US hotels 67%, hotels elsewhere 72%

   A listing 5% or more below the going rate existed at 278 of 417 US hotels (66.7%) and at 300 of 417 hotels outside the US (71.9%). This compares this snapshot's cities only (25 in the US, 24 elsewhere), so it describes these cities, not every hotel in either place.

Snapshot by snapshot

Each day the study priced its own set of cities, so these rows are not a price trend for the same hotels. Before taxes and fees, as the study's CSVs count them.

Method and data

The going rate is the rate the largest number of listings agree on, with ties broken low; a cheaper listing is one 5% or more below it. A city's hotels are the first 20 hotel-type results Google Hotels returns for "hotels in city". Prices are as Google Hotels listed each site that day; sites it did not list are not in the data. Full method, every earlier snapshot and the caveats: the hotel price dispersion study. Each hotel's measured prices, all-in: hotel prices by city.

Per-hotel data for this snapshot (CC BY 4.0): hotel-price-dispersion-2026-10-r15-us-cities.csv and hotel-price-dispersion-2026-10-r16-intl-cities.csv.