BOULDER, Colorado—The U.S. hotel industry industry’s near-term prospects generated plenty of optimism during last month’s Americas Lodging Investment Summit.
The positive outlook was fueled largely by the dearth of new supply and the trending of revenue per available room, which jumped a healthy 6.8% during 2012. And while national RevPAR largely has recovered to prior peak levels, recovery in some major markets is still slightly out of reach.
STR Analytics, sister company of HotelNewsNow.com, analyzed each tract in the county, calculating each area’s year-to-date December RevPAR level versus its prior peak (occurring between 2006 and 2008). Overall, the tracts display a wide range of recovery, ranging from only 60% recovered to more than 180% recovered. A heat map showing the continental U.S. is presented below.
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Any tract shaded green represents a fully recovered area (100% or greater of previous peak, with higher levels of recovery marked by a darker shade of green).
A good portion of the U.S. is awash in green, particularly the Midwest, the Great Lakes region, parts of the Northeast and many areas in Texas. The tract representing the greatest recovery is the North Dakota area, where RevPAR equates to 181.3% of its prior peak. This is due to the oil boom in that region. Other notable recovered areas include the Texas South, Ohio South, Pennsylvania Central and West Virginia North tracts.
Areas shaded in red represent tracts still less than 100% of their prior peak RevPAR levels (with lower levels of recovery marked by darker shades of red). When we remove areas that have fully recovered (i.e. anything in green), it becomes clear that many major metro areas still have yet to reach or surpass their prior RevPAR peaks.
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Most of the eastern half of the U.S. is still red, along with many areas in California, the Pacific Northwest and the Rocky Mountain region. While some major metro areas are fully recovered (San Francisco, Los Angeles), other downtown areas are still lagging, such as the New York area (88% recovered), Chicago (92%), Washington, D.C. (97%) and Atlanta (88%). Most of these areas have recovered in occupancy, but they have not yet been able to push rates high enough to reach previous RevPAR peak levels. This likely will occur for most of the remaining metro areas during 2013.
Nationally, the tracts least recovered in RevPAR are Colorado Northwest (69%), Fort Worth South/West (66%), Beaumont, Texas (61%), and Las Vegas South (60%).
