LOS ANGELES — Everyone at the Americas Lodging Investment Summit wanted to know if STR's latest forecast was good news.
The good news was that there wasn't much change, STR President Amanda Hite said in a podcast interview with HNN during the conference. STR is CoStar's hospitality analytics firm.
"The good news is things are still plugging along; we're doing really well," she said. "There's no dramatic changes."
STR’s revenue per available room outlook for 2024 did not change from its previous forecast. The projection for 4.1% RevPAR growth remains while the forecasts for room demand and supply increased slightly. U.S. hotel supply growth is projected at 0.9%, which means there are not many new rooms expected to open that would significantly affect RevPAR.
The overall economic environment heading into 2024 was stronger than expected, she said. The hotel industry has performed so well, STR pushed back its expectations for a slowdown later into 2024 and brought down its projection for 2025 slightly. The RevPAR projection for 2025 is still positive at 3.5% growth.
“Certainly the economic environment has held up stronger than what most ... macro-forecasters were expecting, and so that certainly plays into why hotel demand has remained strong,” Hite said.
The U.S. unemployment rate remains low among college-educated people, she said. Employed professionals earning $100,000 or more are the ones spending money on travel, and they are prioritizing travel over buying goods.
“I think everyone wants to feel good, but it’s hard to feel good with all of the headlines and uncertainty that things could go one way or another,” she said.
Even though performance isn’t “super boisterous,” she said, it’s steady and there are a lot of opportunities for demand growth in the group and business traveler guest segments. International inbound travel continues to recover as well.
“That’s where people feel confident,” she said. “Yes, we know how to continue to navigate this, and we can pivot if something bad happens, but there’s no reason to expect that. Things are going to continue with measured improvement that will continue to give us good, solid demand for the industry.”
For Hotel News Now's full conversation with STR's Amanda Hite, listen to the podcast above and subscribe to the Hotel News Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to listen.