Competitive set

A competitive set, or comp set, is the group of competitors a customer would realistically compare you with. You benchmark your prices against them rather than against every brand at the airport.

How to pick one

Choose four to eight brands that match you on most of these:

• Desk location: in the terminal, shuttle bus, meet and greet or off airport
• Car categories and fleet age
• Customer rating
• Brand type: global, local, budget

Then compute your market rate index against the comp set's median as well as the whole market's.

Worked example

Real numbers. At Queenstown, in the Rate Pulse sweep of 7 Nov 2026, 18 brands were listed. Budget, in the terminal, priced 59% above the market median. Autounion, on a shuttle bus, priced 67% below. See the Queenstown page.

Hypothetical next step. Say you run a local shuttle-bus operator there. Measuring yourself against the whole market, including in-terminal brands like Budget and Avis, says you're cheap. Against shuttle-bus brands only, you might sit right on the median. Same price, different story.

Why it matters for a rental operator

The wrong comp set gives you the wrong answer with total confidence. Pricing a shuttle-bus operator off in-terminal majors leaves money on the table. Pricing an in-terminal brand off the cheapest depot operators starts a race down.

Revisit it each season. New brands arrive, and others move desks.

See it in Rate Pulse

In Benchmark your rates, the competitors most often cheaper than you are a good place to start your comp set. The brand ranking shows each brand's desk type and rating. Start at Rate Pulse.