Patent ID: 7848945

Claim:
An apparatus for evaluating travel accommodations, comprising: a processor; a memory in communication with the processor and containing program instructions, wherein the processor executes program instructions contained in the memory and the program instructions comprise: identify a plurality of hotel properties, each identified hotel property being associated with a hotel property identifier stored in the memory; determine a cluster center based on geographic latitude and longitude coordinates; determine a cluster radius associated with the cluster center based on a population density associated with the cluster center; determine a hotel distance between a position of at least one of the plurality of hotel properties and the cluster center; associate the at least one of the plurality of hotel properties with the cluster center when the hotel distance is less than the cluster radius; receive input to the processor user selection of a desired one or more rating input characteristics associated with at least one of the plurality of hotel properties, the rating input characteristics including rate competitiveness, hotel availability, hotel location within a cluster location, and hotel quality within a cluster location; determine by the processor a hotel marketability index score for the at least one of the plurality of hotel properties, the hotel marketability index score comprising an ordinal quantifier and being based on a weighted combination of at least two rating input characteristics associated with the at least one of the plurality of hotel properties, wherein weights for the weighted combination are based on a location of the at least one of the plurality of hotel properties relative to the cluster center; and store the hotel marketability index score in association with a hotel property identifier corresponding to the at least one of the plurality of hotel properties in the memory.