The world "palace" conjures visions of exclusivity, royalty and riches. But hotels with "Palace" as part of their name are not all as grand, royal, rare or expensive as that might imply.
There are a lot of "Palace" hotels. In fact, the 219,000 rooms globally represent a little more than the total rooms supply of the United Arab Emirates hotel market, which has 208,000 rooms.
It turns out the chances are the country you’re visiting or living in has at least one, as "Palace" hotels can be found in 113 countries across the globe.
The landscape is largely made up of independent properties. Hotels affiliated and owned by a larger parent company make up about a quarter of all "Palace" hotels. However, there are some interesting findings among branded hotels in this genre.
In the branded space, "Palace" hotels are more upscale than any other class at almost a quarter of the total — 24%, or 106 hotels. Luxury "Palaces" come in on the midpoint at 16%, or 68 hotels, and economy only 2% lower at 14%, or 62 hotels.
Spain has the highest concentration of upscale "Palace" hotels at 45, quite significantly more than India and Japan, with eight each.
Much of that number can be attributed to a Spanish hotel brand named Petit Palace Hoteles, a predominately Madrid-based chain with some city-center hotels and a handful of hotels in other Spanish cities.
On a global scale across all classes, who would have thought Houston, Texas, would take the top spot for the number of branded "Palace" hotels? But all of the "Palace" hotels in Houston are under one midscale brand, Palace Inns.
Independent "Palace" hotels skew largely toward economy and midscale, which combined make up nearly half of the hotels. The economy class alone accounts for 24% of the independent hotels with "Palace" in their names.
Out of 294 independent "Palace" hotels globally, India ranks the highest with 57, followed by the U.S. at 34 and Turkey at 23.
William Anns is a research analyst at STR.
This article represents an interpretation of data collected by CoStar's hospitality analytics firm, STR. Please feel free to contact an editor with any questions or concerns. For more analysis of STR data, visit the data insights blog on STR.com.