Hotel prices in Türkiye’s inflation data: what the accommodation index measures

Türkiye’s consumer price index (CPI) measures price changes for goods and services bought by resident households. Accommodation services sit inside that basket as one weighted item, and the hotels sub-item is a narrower slice of it. The index tracks how the price of that item moves over time. It is not a measure of room rates paid by foreign guests.

A headline says restaurants and hotels led the month’s inflation. A revenue manager reads it as a verdict on room rates; a guest reads it as a reason to bargain. Both are reading a number that was never built to say either thing. After this article you will know exactly what the accommodation item in Türkiye’s hotel price inflation data measures, what it leaves out, and how to build a price series of your own that can actually answer the question people keep asking you.

What is Türkiye’s consumer price index, and whose prices does it follow?#

The consumer price index (CPI, TÜİK’s Tüketici Fiyat Endeksi) tracks how the prices of a fixed basket of goods and services bought by resident households change from month to month. It is a household consumption measure, not a business price or an export price measure. That single sentence rules out most of the misreadings that follow.

Three labels travel with every CPI figure, and every citation needs all of them: the base year (2025=100), the classification (COCOOP, written COICOP 2018) and the basket year (2026). A percentage without those labels cannot be compared with another percentage from a different base year or basket. When weights change between basket years, the change rates are re-linked, but you still need the labels to know what you are quoting.

Weights are each item’s share of household spending in the basket. A 2.70% weight means accommodation is a small line in the average resident household’s monthly spending, not a small line in the tourism economy. Those are different denominators, and mixing them is the most common error in commentary on this subject.

Whose prices the index follows matters more than anything else here: households resident in Türkiye. A rate paid by a visitor who lives abroad sits outside the frame, however large that visitor’s share of a hotel’s revenue. If half your rooms are sold in euros to guests living abroad, the index is silent about half of your business.

The index is published monthly. The September 2026 bulletin from TÜİK (opens in a new tab) was released on 5 October 2026; the October 2026 CPI is scheduled for 3 November 2026. Those dates tell you how old any figure you quote is, and they belong in the citation.

The CPI was built for indexation, contracts and policy. It was not built to benchmark one hotel, one resort town or one month of one season. Before quoting a secondary source, check the primary one: TÜİK’s data portal publishes the bulletin, the weights table by main expenditure group and the change table by COICOP 2018 sub-class. For a wider guide to citing official figures correctly, see how to read and cite official Türkiye tourism data.

Where does accommodation sit in the CPI basket?#

Accommodation services (COICOP 112) weigh 2.70% of the 2026 CPI basket, inside the main group “restaurants and accommodation services” (COICOP 11), which weighs 11.13%. The group is mostly restaurants: accommodation holds 2.70 of the group’s 11.13 points, so a move in restaurant prices moves the group far more than an equal move in accommodation prices.

Inside the 2.70, the hotels sub-class (COICOP 11201) carries 2.59 points. Its basket item is named “Otel ücreti”, the hotel accommodation fee. The other 0.11 points are accommodation services of boarding schools, universities and other educational establishments (COICOP 11203). That small item is why the class figure and the hotels figure are not identical.

Source: TÜİK, September 2026 release, 5 October 2026; weights from the 2026 basket.

The sub-class name lists hotels, motels and pensions. It does not cover every certified facility type in Türkiye, so never read the item as “all accommodation”, and never call all certified facilities hotels. A boutique hotel, an apart hotel and a simple lodging facility are different categories in the Ministry’s certification statistics, and only some of them appear in this CPI sub-class name.

Weight is a share of household spending. It is not a share of tourism revenue, of bed capacity or of your booking volume, and the three should never be mixed in one sentence. A small weight still contributes: a 13.44% rise on 2.59 points adds far less to the headline than a 29.53% rise on the restaurant side of the same group.

What does the accommodation item cover, and what does it leave out?#

It covers what a resident household pays for a night in a hotel, motel or pension, plus a small educational-accommodation item. It leaves out everything a guest does not buy directly as a household.

The basket item is named “Otel ücreti”: a consumer price, the amount on the bill to the guest who pays it. That is the object being tracked. Out of frame are contract rates negotiated by tour operators and travel agencies, group and corporate rates, allotments, and prices quoted in foreign currency to buyers who live abroad. Also out is package-tour pricing, where accommodation is bundled with transport and the room has no separate consumer price.

The index has no occupancy term, no length-of-stay term, no channel mix and no currency. It is a price series, not a revenue series. It is also a national average across the basket: it cannot tell you what happened in one destination in one month, or in one segment of one hotel.

TÜİK publishes the item name, the weight and the change rate. It does not publish a per-hotel price series, so anything you say about how the price is gathered should come from TÜİK’s own metadata, not from assumption. The practical rule: when you quote the item, say it is household-paid accommodation services. Calling it “hotel prices” without that qualifier is the most common error in this subject.

Why “restaurants and hotels led inflation” is not a statement about room rates#

Because the headline group mixes restaurant services with accommodation, and in September 2026 the two moved very differently: the hotels sub-item rose 13.44% year on year, the main group 29.53% and the CPI as a whole 29.73% (TÜİK, released 5 October 2026). Quote the three figures together, each with its month, year and release date: hotels sub-item 13.44% year on year and 0.11% on the month; main group 29.53% and 1.41%; CPI 29.73%.

The arithmetic is plain. Restaurant services hold most of the group’s 11.13 points, so the group’s annual movement is largely a restaurant story. A headline naming the group is accurate about the group and silent about hotels. Both statements can be true at once, and readers routinely collapse them into one.

Even the hotels sub-item is a household average. It is not evidence about what foreign guests paid, what your competitors charged, or what your own ADR did. What the index can carry: the direction and rough magnitude of household-paid accommodation prices, compared month to month on the same base year and basket. What it cannot carry: competitiveness claims, statements that Türkiye is expensive or losing ground, forecasts, or a verdict on any hotel’s pricing decisions.

If you need the revenue side, that is a different TÜİK release with different definitions. Keep the two apart in your own reporting: what TÜİK’s tourism revenue figure includes and how the per-visitor spending figures are built are separate measurements, not extensions of the CPI.

How do I measure my own price change in lira and in the currencies I sell in?#

Fix a like-for-like set of room-nights, compute the average daily rate in lira each month, then convert with the TCMB indicative rate for a stated date. Report the lira series and each currency series side by side and never merge them into one number.

Define the fixed basket first: the same room types, the same meal basis, the same cancellation and payment terms, the same length-of-stay mix. Without that you measure mix, not price. Compute ADR as room revenue divided by occupied room-nights, in lira, monthly, from the same source every time. Write the formula down so the series survives a change of staff.

Convert with the TCMB’s indicative exchange rates (opens in a new tab), announced at 15:30 each business day. They are not binding on anyone, and the rate used between two parties is left to those parties, so state your choice openly. State which date you convert at, booking date or stay date, and keep it constant. Switching dates mid-series creates a currency story that is really an accounting story.

If you sell in several currencies, keep one series per currency and one weighted series built from your actual sales mix. Label which is which on the chart. Report occupancy next to ADR: a rising ADR with falling occupancy is a different situation from a rise in both, and the index cannot distinguish them for you. Compare with the CPI only at the level it can carry, same month, same base year, the household-paid accommodation item, direction and rough magnitude. Anything finer is over-reading. For the pricing decisions themselves, see revenue decisions when demand is flat.

How should I cite the index?#

Cite the release, the month and year, the base year, the classification, the group or sub-class name with its code, and the release date, in that order. Then add the weight if the number is small. Use a fixed template so every citation in your reports looks the same and can be checked by someone else.

Say “year on year” or “on the month” every time. An unlabelled percentage is not a citation, it is a rumour with a decimal point. Name the group when you quote the group and the sub-class when you quote the sub-class: swapping them is how a 29.53% restaurant-led figure becomes a false statement about hotels.

Add the weight when the item is small. A 13.44% change on a 2.59% weight is not the same statement as a 29.73% change on the whole index, and the reader deserves both numbers. Give the next release date so the reader can judge the age of the figure: the October 2026 CPI is scheduled for 3 November 2026. Close with the public-data line so nobody mistakes a citation for a relationship.

What to do next#

Build your own price series before you quote anyone else’s. This month, define the fixed room-night basket, write down the ADR formula and the conversion rule, and produce your first lira and currency series side by side. Then read the index for what it is: a household consumption measure that gives the direction of consumer accommodation prices, not a verdict on your rooms. For how the official Türkiye figures fit together, see ai-otel.com/turkiye.