STR: Positive Growth For Hotel Sector In 2017

It seems 2017 was a good year for the U.S. hotel industry. 

Despite some fluctuation in the market due to environmental turmoil and increased competition, demand and occupancy growth have improved and are expected to remain steady, STR reports.

For the year ending Dec. 31, the industry overall will report an increase of 0.5% occupancy to 65.7%, while the average daily rate will rise by 2.1% to $126.66. Revenue per available room has been growing steadily from 2010 to 2016 and this is anticipated to continue with RevPAR increasing by 2.5% to $83.23.

While most markets are expected to report flat growth, four are projected to report increases ranging between 5% and 10%. These areas include Detroit; Orlando, Florida; Seattle; and Houston, which was heavily impacted by Hurricane Harvey.

“The hurricane impact was extremely strong. In October, room demand was 38% higher than last year so their RevPAR was up almost 50% for the month of October, which is an off-the-chart growth number,” STR Senior Vice President Jan Freitag said.

Meanwhile, midscale and independent segments are expected to report the highest increase in occupancy. Luxury hotels on the other end of the spectrum are expected to report the lowest increases.

“What we’re seeing on the high end is very full occupancies. Luxury hotels are selling 74.9% of their rooms so that means it’s really hard to grow occupancy. If you can’t grow occupancy, all the growth has to come from room-rate growth. But independent hotel RevPAR growth is just a function of they have room to grow on the occupancy side. Their occupancy year-to-date is 64.6%,” Freitag said.