Overview Leaderboard Methodology
Industry Report

Budget & Economy Hotels

Value-focused hotel brands offering basic, no-frills accommodations and essential amenities at affordable prices.

Brands tracked: 38
Brands analyzed: 38
Last updated: 2026-04-23
Model: OpenAI GPT-5
Prompts: 293
Total responses: 1,505
Top Brand Overall?
Hilton
65/100

Highest overall AI Visibility Score in this industry.

LBA Leader?
Marriott Hotels
92

Highest score on the LBA metric in this industry.

Authority Leader?
Motel 6
51

Highest score on the Authority metric in this industry.

TOM Leader?
Motel 6
86

Highest score on the TOM metric in this industry.

Budget & Economy Hotels has no dominant brand in AI responses

Hilton is the top-ranked brand here, but its overall score of 65 reflects a competitive field rather than a dominant player. AI assistants answer category questions about Budget & Economy Hotels with varied recommendations from query to query - users get a different set of suggestions each time. This is the kind of category where mid-tier brands still have room to move up.

Brand Leaderboard All 38 Budget & Economy Hotels brands ranked

Ranked by overall AI Visibility Score (smoothed geometric mean of LBA, Authority, and TOM with an LBA-based floor on Authority and TOM, see methodology). Click any brand for the full report.

# Brand LBA Authority TOM Overall
1
Hilton
hilton.com
 87
39
79
65
2
Motel 6
motel6.com
 61
51
86
64
3
Holiday Inn Express
ihg.com
 76
36
73
59
4
Super 8
super8.com
 69
23
64
47
5
Red Roof
redroof.com
 65
24
54
44
6
Days Inn
daysinn.com
 70
9
57
35
7
La Quinta by Wyndham
laquinta.com
 74
10
41
32
8
Best Western
bestwestern.com
 74
7
34
29
9
Avid Hotels
avidhotels.com
 67
7
31
26
10
Comfort Inn
choicehotels.com
 77
8
24
26
11
Premier Inn
premierinn.com
 82
9
18
25
12
Sleep Inn
sleepinn.com
 70
7
21
24
13
Travelodge
travelodge.co.uk
 61
6
28
24
14
Marriott Hotels
marriott.com
 92
9
9
22
15
Econo Lodge
econolodge.com
 61
6
18
21
16
ibis budget
ibisbudget.com
 65
6
16
21
17
Travelodge by Wyndham
travelodge.com
 55
6
17
19
18
Toyoko Inn
toyoko-inn.com
 73
7
7
18
19
B&B Hotels
hotel-bb.com
 69
7
7
17
20
Campanile
campanile.com
 67
7
7
17
21
Extended Stay America
extendedstayamerica.com
 64
6
6
16
22
H
Hanting
hantinghotels.com
 65
6
6
16
23
Microtel by Wyndham
microtelinn.com
 64
6
6
16
24
OYO
oyorooms.com
 65
7
7
16
25
Rodeway Inn
rodewayinn.com
 66
7
7
16
26
J
Jinjiang Inn
jinjianginns.com
 61
6
6
15
27
Premiere Classe
premiereclasse.com
 60
6
6
15
28
Americas Best Value Inn
americasbestvalueinn.com
 57
6
6
14
29
City Express
cityexpress.com
 54
5
5
14
30
easyHotel
easyhotel.com
 58
6
6
14
31
7
7 Days Inn
7daysinn.cn
 53
5
5
13
32
hotelF1
hotelf1.com
 50
5
5
13
33
WoodSpring Suites
woodspring.com
 51
5
5
13
34
GreenTree Inn
greentreeinn.com
 48
5
5
12
35
Knights Inn
knightsinn.com
 46
5
5
12
36
T
Tulip Inn
tulip-inn.com
 43
4
4
11
37
T
Tune Hotels
tunehotels.com
 41
4
4
11
38
Fasthotel
fasthotel.com
 26
3
3
7

How is this calculated? Methodology

Every brand in this leaderboard is scored against the same set of 293 shared Budget & Economy Hotels prompts. The same prompts, same model, same iterations. So differences in scores reflect actual differences in AI visibility, not differences in measurement.

Overall AI Visibility Score
Smoothed geometric mean of LBA, Authority and TOM. Authority and TOM are floored at LBA × 0.1 before the geometric mean (the same floor used in the per-metric cards above, so brand cards and the composite tell the same story). Formula: composite = ((LBA + 5)(Authority + 5)(TOM + 5))^(1/3) - 5. The floor keeps brands the model clearly recognises but doesn't yet recommend from collapsing to zero, while a single genuinely weak metric still pulls the composite down. Full methodology.
Shared industry prompts
For Authority and TOM, all brands in the industry are scored against the same 293 category prompts (e.g. "best SEO tools for agencies"). This makes brand-to-brand comparisons valid - everyone faces identical inputs. LBA prompts are per-brand because they ask brand-specific questions.
Latent Brand Association (LBA)
5 brand probes + 1 control prompt, each run 5 times in recall mode (no web search). LBA = quality × meta × stability × share × recognition × 100. Read the full LBA methodology →
LLM Authority
50 organic category prompts (discovery, comparison, problem and transactional intents), each run once in recall mode and once in retrieval mode. Score = frequency × log-decayed prominence × intent weight, then 50/50 averaged across the two modes. Read the full Authority methodology →
Top of Mind (TOM)
15 high-volume discovery prompts (sourced from Keywords Everywhere search-volume data), each run 5 times in pure recall mode (no web). Score = frequency × (0.5 + 0.5 × log-prominence), volume-weighted. Read the full TOM methodology →