The US hotel markets that could stand out or underperform in 2025

Every day brings about the daunting question of "What's next?" and for hoteliers looking ahead to the new year, that question is even bigger.

HNN reached out to some hotel executives to get their thoughts on some of the markets they're keeping a close eye on in 2025. These hotel markets may be ready to take off, continue a steady rate of growth or struggle as factors work against them.

Allison Handy is executive vice president of commercial at Aimbridge Hospitality, the world's largest third-party hotel management company. Kevin McAteer is senior vice president of marketing and sales at Concord Hospitality, a hotel development, ownership and operations company.

With the closures of the Austin Convention Center and Dallas Convention Center for renovations in 2025, Houston is going to get a boost in demand, Handy said. The Fort Worth Convention Center is going through a phased expansion and renovation project, set to be complete in 2029, and remains open and is drawing business from other cities with closed convention centers.

“I don’t know how they all got together and decided, ‘Let’s all do this at the same time,' but with all three convention centers undergoing renovations or expansions, you have a positive outcome in Houston as a result,” she said.

That said, it doesn’t all translate to a jump to high hotel occupancy levels and compression nights. Some smaller events, called mini-wides instead of citywides, will be swallowed up by the Omni Dallas Hotel, which connects to the convention center, so they won’t create outward pressure that bigger events can make. There are other demand generators in Fort Worth, including filming and development of its downtown.

For Houston specifically, the George Bush Intercontinental Airport is undergoing an expansion, which should lead to greater demand, Handy said. Oil and gas company Chevron is moving its headquarters from California to Houston.

These positive factors will be offset somewhat in Houston by the loss of Federal Emergency Management Agency and disaster-related hotel rooms booked in 2024, she said. The market was a staging area for a great deal of disaster response operations last year.

“While it should be really great year-on-year growth, it’s not going to appear as strong from a growth perspective because of the unusual demand that came in [2024],” she said.

Austin’s citywide events are down 30% year-over-year because of its convention center closure, Handy said. CBRE and CoStar analysts still expect at least steady demand in the market, however, though she thinks it will be minimal.

"I think they're looking at it from a corporate and new companies moving in and expansion, but to have that level of a citywide drop without the convention center, I can't imagine that it's going to remain strong," she said.

Nashville struggled in 2024, and it’s going to struggle again in 2025.

“It’s an oversupply issue,” Handy said of the Music City, which for years absorbed new hotel rooms easily. “We’re calling it the COVID blues.”

So much business went to Nashville during the pandemic because the city was open and had a lot of great product there already, she said. Now there’s a bit of reluctance to return there as people are going to other cities. At the time of the interview, Aimbridge projected the city would be down about 6% year over year in revenue per available room.

There’s talk of more demand coming to the market due to international flight expansions, but Handy said she's not expecting to see “huge growth” coming to Nashville.

“It’s not where we expected it to be, or where we would hope for it to be,” she said.

That said, Nashville's New Nissan Stadium will open in 2027 and Taylor Swift is supposed to be the opening act, so it does have a bright light looking out into the future, she said.

For the most part, hotels in Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa have not seen demand drop off, and there has been "an incredible surge" over the years, McAteer said. That the markets are holding on now is remarkable, he added.

Miami has been touch and go, and there was a lot of dependency on international arrivals, but the market hasn't figured out how to replace these guests, he said. That will likely take more time.

However, things are headed in the right direction for Miami, and the other hotel markets in Florida are still doing great, McAteer said.

"I really think it's just there's a lot of entertainment and sports on top of no stop to middle- to upper-economic business transient or families or couples or individuals wanting to travel to those locations," he said. "If anything, there's been a calm of crowdedness."

It's moved beyond the seasonality of these locations, McAteer said. There's NASCAR, the World Cup, concerts and other forms of live entertainment of all genres that have done a lot to bring in both drive-to and fly-in customers.

"There's no end of artists that have been on the road almost for like 18 to 24 straight months, and when they come off, it seems like another round of people are replacing them," he said.

Raleigh is a city that has strong infrastructure and market segment conditions that feed into hotels, McAteer said. It’s an educational powerhouse and a popular place to live, especially for tech professionals.

“It’s been really important to have a combination of good, strong branded hotels that can handle convention business while having a lot of unique lifestyle, soft-brand boutique options,” he said. “It really leads to a market that caters to everybody."

The Raleigh market may not come up as one of anyone’s top five entertainment cities, but it has about 15 crafted, unique venues, including stadiums, small theaters and medium-sized concert halls, he said. It’s become a place that on any given weekend and shoulder night, there are multiple places travelers can go and see a variety of different sports or entertainment options.

“All those factors play into it — tapping into small meetings, the business transient that's growing and leisure travel — those are the conditions that have helped us in a lot of those markets,” he said.

Markets with major universities and research operations show a lot of promise, McAteer said. Columbus, for example, is home to Ohio State University, has one of the largest cancer proton therapy centers around and it will open an electric vehicle research lab in April 2025.

“When you take that and combine it with very strong university platforms for higher education — and I'm not talking about sports — but just the number of educational programs there, what you really find is it becomes one of those top cities for young professionals to want to live in,” he said.

It’s an affordable city for residents that offers great career opportunities, he said. That combines with a lot of strong infrastructure, including a new convention center as well as new convention hotels and boutique hotels.

“I think that's a market that quietly has set itself up for greatness over the next five or 10 years when it comes to all things tourism,” he said.

Atlanta was another market that struggled in 2024, Handy said. Aimbridge has a high concentration of hotels there, and while its hotels fared well overall, there’s not much driving significant growth in the market.

“There are no major changes. There are no major fluctuations. It's kind of steady as she goes, so it's about where are you grabbing your market share from?” she said.

Parts of Atlanta had an OK year in 2024, McAteer said. Atlanta is a major hub for people to travel in and out, both domestically and internationally, and that should continue to grow.

The city will host eight FIFA World Cup matches in 2026 and will attract other major sporting events, he said. There are some submarkets in Atlanta that are home to major Fortune 500 companies, and the expectation is there will be more return to office in the market and regional meetings on a more consistent basis.

Hotels in the Big Apple should have an interesting year in 2025, McAteer said.

"You've got two balls in the air right now on what policies or regulations are going to impact migrant occupancy and Airbnb," he said, referring to the city's practice of housing migrants in hotels and new short-term rental regulations. "If you were to reverse everything in that, just in New York City alone, that's thousands of inventory rooms. You include Airbnb and how that changed through some regulations, you may be talking in the tens of thousands."

How all of that plays out is something that Concord will continue to watch month to month, he said. As New York City goes, that extends into neighboring markets, such as Jersey City and East Rutherford.

"We're budgeting and forecasting another strong year [in the area], so we'll see what happens," he said. "That's probably the one that for us requires the most month-in and month-out attention to see what's happening outside of our industry that's going to impact us directly."

New Orleans had a strong year in 2024, helped by Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, Handy said. It had a strong convention calendar last year, so there was a good mix of business in the market.

Looking ahead, the city will host Super Bowl LIX during the first quarter. The city will continue to benefit the rest of the year from a variety of events taking place, she said.

Aimbridge has a concentration of hotels in North Dakota, and given the incoming presidential administration, the oil and gas markets there should turn into winning markets in 2025, Handy said.

“There’s not a lot of supply, and they’re small properties, but it is still an interesting story for those owners there,” she said.

This past year, hoteliers lost a large part of their midscale and upper-midscale guests, but Aimbridge is projecting a bit of a rebound in 2025, Handy said. That should lead to growth in some secondary markets.

The luxury hotel segment remains strong and should continue to be, she said. Airport hotels should continue to perform well, too.

"Based on the preliminary of what I'm seeing, I think we're going to see more of the same, but I think we're going to add in the rebound of that midscale traveler," she said.

On the group side, Aimbridge is starting to see leads that traditionally would be in upper-upscale starting to source more in the upper-midscale hotels as well, she said.

There's a belief that with interest rates stabilizing and a greater level of confidence among some travelers in the incoming presidential administration, there could be more travel in these chain-scale segments, Handy said.

"It is giving some people optimism, particularly in that working class category, where they've been struggling and haven't been traveling," she said. "I think that there's a draw to return."

*Correction, Jan. 3, 2025: This story has been updated to correct the nature of the Fort Worth Convention Center's renovation project.

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