Market penetration index (MPI): your occupancy against your competitors'
The market penetration index, or MPI, compares your occupancy with the occupancy of the hotels you compete with, as a number around 100. Divide your occupancy by theirs and multiply by 100. At 100 you filled the same share of your rooms as they did; above 100 you won more than your share of the guests staying in hotels like yours, below 100 fewer. It is also called the occupancy index.
The formulaYour occupancy ÷ your competitors' occupancy × 100
Also called: MPI, occupancy index, occ index, penetration index, MPI formula.
A OneHorizyn page. Updated .
Market penetration index calculator
It opens on made-up figures. Put in your own; nothing you type leaves this page.
68.3 ÷ 62 × 100: at or above your competitors, where 100 is level
What 100 means
HSMAI's glossary says that if all things are equal, a hotel's MPI is 100: it fills the same share of its rooms as the group it is compared with. That is its fair share of the guests.
- 100: you filled the same share of your rooms as your competitors filled of theirs.
- Above 100: you filled more. 110 means a tenth more of your rooms were sold than of theirs.
- Below 100: you filled fewer. 90 means a tenth fewer.
MPI says how many guests you won, not what they paid. A hotel can top the town for occupancy by being its cheapest, so read MPI beside the average rate index, ARI, and the revenue generation index, RGI.
How to work it out, step by step
- 1Choose the period and the competitors, and keep both the same from one month to the next.
- 2Work out your occupancy: rooms sold divided by rooms available, multiplied by 100.
- 3Work out your competitors' occupancy as one group: all their rooms sold added together, divided by all their rooms available added together, multiplied by 100. Averaging their percentages instead would let a small hotel count for as much as a large one.
- 4Divide your occupancy by theirs and multiply by 100.
A 40-room hotel sells 820 of its 1,200 rooms in September: occupancy 68.3%. Five hotels it competes with have 200 rooms between them, so 6,000 rooms to sell in the month, and sell 3,720 of them: occupancy 62%. Its MPI for September is 68.3 ÷ 62 × 100 = 110.2: it filled about a tenth more of its rooms than they did.
The calculator on this page opens on the same month. Put in your own occupancy and your competitors' to see yours.
Choosing the competitors honestly
HSMAI's glossary describes a competitive set as hotels that compete for similar guests, alike in location, service level, facilities, price range and the guests they aim for, and warns that a poorly chosen set leads to wrong conclusions. For occupancy, the guests matter most.
- Choose hotels that fill from the same guests as you: a hotel full of wedding parties every winter weekend is no test for one that sells to business travellers midweek.
- Choose hotels in the same place and at a similar price: the ones a guest sees beside you on Google Maps and in the booking sites' lists for your area.
- Leave out hotels that sell most of their rooms to one company or tour group: their occupancy says little about yours.
- Don't pick hotels you know are struggling, to look good. An MPI above 100 against weak hotels hides the guests you lose to strong ones.
- Keep the set steady, and change it only when the market changes. EHL Hospitality Business School advises reviewing it at least once a year, and says STR recommends at least five hotels in a set.
Where a small hotel gets its competitors' occupancy
No hotel publishes how many rooms it sold. There are two honest ways to get near it.
- STR, now part of CoStar. A hotel that sends STR its own figures gets its occupancy set against a group of competitors it chooses, as one figure for the group, never hotel by hotel. EHL Hospitality Business School says hotels of all sizes can take part, and that the price is a quote from CoStar.
- The nights your competitors look full. Google and the booking sites don't show rooms sold, but a competitor that shows no price at all on a night is most likely full. Counting those nights against your own full nights is a rough guide to whether they fill more often than you, and on which nights.
The occupancy across India in 2025/26 in Hotelivate-Savills' survey of 2,168 hotels with 2,09,180 rooms, mostly branded. A national figure is not your competitors', but it says whether your year moved with the country's.
OneHorizyn reads each competitor's prices on Google for each of the next 90 nights, every week, and names the nights each one shows no price and looks sold, with your own price that night beside it.
How to read it, and what to do
- MPI above 100 with ARI below 100: you are winning guests on price. EHL Hospitality Business School says this may mean filling rooms too cheaply. Try higher prices on busy nights.
- MPI below 100 with ARI above 100: guests are choosing the hotels around you. Check whether your price is out of line with what you offer, and whether guests find you on the booking sites and on Google.
- MPI below 100 with ARI at or below 100: price is not the reason. Look at your reviews, your photos, your place in the booking sites' lists, and whether you are on sale on every site where your competitors are.
- MPI well above 100 every weekend: those nights sell anyway. Price them higher, and put the effort into the weekdays.
- Read it night by night where you can. A month's MPI can hide a festival weekend you sold out a week before everyone else, a sign the price was too low.
What it doesn't tell you
- What guests paid. The average rate index says that.
- Where they booked. A full hotel booked through booking sites keeps less than the same hotel booked direct.
- Rooms you couldn't sell. If some of your rooms were closed, count them the way your competitors' figures are counted, or the index misleads.
- Anything at all if the set is wrong.
