"% less than usual" isn't the same as cheap
When Google Hotels said a 4- or 5-star hotel was at least 30% "less than usual," the typical one was only 16% cheaper than similar hotels for the same nights, and about 1 in 3 cost the same or more. We compared 18,903 hotel prices across 20 destinations in the US, Mexico and the Caribbean, October 27, 2026 – November 10, 2026.
The label isn't wrong. It answers a different question: it compares a hotel with its own usual price. It doesn't tell you whether the hotel next door, with the same stars and reviews, costs less that night. An expensive hotel at 40% off can still be the pricier choice.
Median discount Google showed vs the median saving compared with similar hotels (1,018 labelled prices, 289 hotels).
labelled hotels (32%) cost the same as or more than the median of similar hotels for the same dates.
were 40% or more below similar hotels: the bar we use for a real hotel steal.
The size of the label told us almost nothing: across all 2,610 prices labelled 20% or more, the correlation between the label and the real saving was 0.04. Labels of 20–49% all came out at 10–16% below similar hotels. Only the rare 50%+ labels (104 prices, 34 hotels) did better, at 31%.
Three real examples
The last example is the flip side: some of the best prices carried small labels or none. Of the 15,163 prices with no label at all, 6.9% were 40% or more below similar hotels. Some of those are simply cheaper hotels; a few are real drops that Google's label missed.
By destination
Prices labelled 30% or more "less than usual," destinations with at least 25 of them. Sorted by how often the labelled hotel cost the same or more than similar hotels.
| Destination | Labelled prices | Median label | Median vs similar | Same or more than similar | 40%+ below similar |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orlando, Florida | 121 (17 hotels) | 42% | 1% below | 50% | 17% |
| Riviera Maya, Mexico | 112 (21 hotels) | 37% | 10% below | 46% | 7% |
| Miami Beach, Florida | 59 (21 hotels) | 35% | 13% below | 44% | 14% |
| Washington, DC | 53 (23 hotels) | 34% | 6% below | 43% | 9% |
| Chicago, Illinois | 81 (22 hotels) | 38% | 16% below | 32% | 20% |
| San Francisco, California | 29 (11 hotels) | 34% | 5% below | 31% | 10% |
| New Orleans, Louisiana | 55 (25 hotels) | 38% | 15% below | 29% | 16% |
| Cancun, Mexico | 61 (10 hotels) | 34% | 32% below | 26% | 34% |
| Boston, Massachusetts | 42 (18 hotels) | 35% | 12% below | 24% | 5% |
| San Diego, California | 93 (24 hotels) | 36% | 19% below | 24% | 13% |
| New York, New York | 56 (27 hotels) | 34% | 10% below | 23% | 18% |
| Punta Cana, Dominican Republic | 45 (16 hotels) | 34% | 32% below | 20% | 38% |
| Scottsdale, Arizona | 54 (6 hotels) | 44% | 40% below | 20% | 50% |
| Nashville, Tennessee | 30 (11 hotels) | 34% | 32% below | 20% | 33% |
| Las Vegas, Nevada | 60 (18 hotels) | 35% | 21% below | 15% | 27% |
| Key West, Florida | 25 (5 hotels) | 32% | 16% below | 8% | 8% |
Orlando stands out partly because theme-park hotels charge far more than other hotels with the same stars and reviews. Their discounts can be real and still leave them pricier than the alternatives.
All-inclusive resorts vs regular hotels
| Type | Labelled 30%+ | Median label | Median vs similar | Same or more than similar |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All-inclusive resorts | 228 (50 resorts) | 36% | 22% below | 35% |
| Hotels (room only) | 790 (239 hotels) | 36% | 16% below | 31% |
How to check a hotel "deal" in two minutes
- Ignore the size of the discount. It tells you about the hotel's own price history, not about your other options.
- Sort the same search by price and filter to the same stars and a similar guest rating. If five comparable hotels cost less, the "deal" isn't one.
- Compare the same thing. All-inclusive vs all-inclusive, room-only vs room-only, with resort fees and taxes in both.
- Check the hotel's own site. In 59% of our hotel checks where the hotel's own site showed a price, it matched or beat every booking site.
That's what our hotel deal checks do automatically every day, and why we only call a hotel a steal at 40% or more below similar hotels.
Method and limits
- Data: Google Hotels search results collected daily through DataForSEO since October 18, 2026 (34,429 prices in total). Each search is a destination, a check-in date from a few days to about five weeks out, 2, 3 or 5 nights, 2 adults, 4–5 star hotels; up to 60 results deep for resort destinations and 18 for cities. Hotel type, stars, guest rating and review count have been stored with each price since October 27, 2026, so the comparison covers October 27, 2026 – November 10, 2026.
- Price: the lowest nightly price Google listed for the hotel in that search. The hotel and its comparison set always come from the same search, so they share dates, party and price basis.
- "Similar hotels": hotels in the same search of the same type (all-inclusive or room-only), the same star class and a guest rating within 0.3 points (0.5 if that left fewer than six). We used the median of their prices and skipped any price with fewer than six similar hotels: 18,903 prices from 1,071 hotels in 887 searches qualified.
- Labels: Google's "X% less than usual" note as shown when we collected the price. "Labelled" means 20% or more unless stated; the headline numbers use 30% or more.
- Counting: a hotel can appear in several searches and on several days, so we report both prices and distinct hotels. Hotel-level results tell the same story: of 289 hotels with a 30%+ label, about a third were at or above similar hotels' median.
- Limits: stars and ratings don't capture everything that makes a hotel worth more (brand, exact location, room size, theme-park access). The destinations and hotels are the ones Google returned for our searches, not every hotel in each place, and two weeks of autumn data don't cover every season.
Using this research
You're welcome to quote these findings or republish the charts and tables with a link to this page (CC BY 4.0). The summary tables are in a CSV file. Journalists who want the underlying data or a different cut (one city, one hotel type) can email hello@stealtrips.com.
StealTrips, "Hotel discount labels vs similar hotels," November 10, 2026. https://stealtrips.com/research/hotel-discount-labels