Sometimes the U.S. hotel performance data is not what it seems.
That was the case with January's 4.5% revenue per available room jump — a figure so high, it prompted the hosts of Tell Me More: A Hospitality Data Podcast to remind listeners that there's always a story behind the data.
Isaac Collazo, senior director of analytics for STR, said the two factors driving January's outsize gain for U.S. hotels are special events and weather.
Inauguration Day and the College Football Playoff National Championship drove hotel rates and occupancy high in Washington, D.C., and Atlanta; while the triple whammy of effects from L.A. wildfires and Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton inflated performance in 17 U.S. markets in January.
"If you take out those weather, special event-impacted markets, you're really looking at a RevPAR [growth] of 1.8%, and that's down from December," Collazo said.
U.S. hotel average daily rate in January was high, as was demand, but in real inflation-adjusted terms, the U.S. hotel industry is not back yet, Collazo said.
"Even with the higher RevPAR and ADR, real ADR was down 4.2% versus 2019, and real RevPAR is down 7.6% versus 2019," he said. "It's all to say the recovery has not been completed yet. So again, we still have a long way to go to get there."
Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality analytics for CoStar, put January into context, saying it's like looking at real versus nominal RevPAR growth.
"We're all taking nominal RevPAR growth to the bank, you know, but we also care about the inflation-adjusted number," he said.
At the end of the day, operators in markets showing strong growth "are like no, no, who cares?" Freitag added.
Also in this episode
- Hotel performance internationally continues to grow. Japan posted 30% RevPAR growth in January and 8.4% demand growth.
- U.S. hotel pipeline numbers remain unchanged: "We have had between 150,000 and 160,000 rooms in construction for 38 months. For over three years, it's been the same number," Freitag said.
- The percentage of hotels globally that have reached 2019 occupancy levels is 40.2%, Collazo said. He cited recent research comparing same-store occupancy. That percentage for U.S. hotels was 37.3%.