Seen on Hotelmarketing.com, Jan 29, 2008
Revenue for U.S. hotels will keep rising in 2008, but at a slower rate than in the past couple of years as leisure travel softens and the supply of new hotel rooms increases, industry experts said on Monday.
Despite recession fears, steady demand from business travelers is expected to allow hoteliers to raise room prices by 5.2 percent this year, while occupancy slips 0.8 percent, bringing revenue per available room—a combination of room rates and occupancy that is a benchmark of industry health—up 4.4 percent for the year, according to a forecast from Smith Travel Research presented at a lodging industry conference in Los Angeles.
Revenue per available room, or revpar for short, rose 5.7 percent last year and 7.8 percent in 2006.
U.S. consumers are cutting back on spending and a full- blown recession would indeed crimp the business travelers that hotels have come to rely on as their best-paying customers, but Smith Travel, which tracks the lodging industry, does not forecast a recession.
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