HENDERSONVILLE, Tennessee—Every four years some of our clients in the analyst and research community ask us for insights into the election year data and possible impacts on the U.S. national data.
We have already looked at primary-state impact, today we’ll focus on the host cities of the national conventions. The 2020 Democratic National Convention will be held 13-16 July 13–16 at Fiserv Forum, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The 2020 Republican National Convention will be held 24-27 August at Spectrum Center in Charlotte, North Carolina.
What can hoteliers in these markets expect? Will there be a measurable impact on the U.S. results from these one-time events?
First, let’s look back at the prior conventions to determine the revenue-per-available-room impact for the weekly data. STR data is clear that the events provide large positive percent change for the affected submarkets in the week of the convention. (STR is the parent company of Hotel News Now.)
Of course, the respective percent increases hinge on the average market performance in a typical month, and it is therefore no surprise to see relatively small increases in markets that are historically already quite busy, such as midtown Manhattan or downtown Boston.
The question, then, is if these changes are detectable in our total U.S. data. In the three periods prior to 2016, the conventions did not happen in the same months; only in 2016 did both events occur in July. The impact of the convention demand and ADR increases was therefore quite muted, and increases in results can likely not be 100% attributed to the conventions. That said, we deducted the two convention markets from the U.S. results and the following pattern is discernable:
Not surprisingly, this impact then lessens even more when looking at the full third quarter data when the conventions take place.
The conventions also have no discernable impact on the annual U.S. data in an election year.
Overall, the conventions of the two political parties lift performance in the host market substantially and have some small positive impact on the national numbers in the month when they take place but do not move the national data beyond that.
Jan Freitag is the SVP of lodging insights at STR. Tingting Duan is a research analyst at STR.
This article represents an interpretation of data collected by STR, parent company of HNN. Please feel free to comment or contact an editor with any questions or concerns.