The U.S. hotel industry posted declines in three key performance measurements during the week of 13-19 December 2009, according to data from Smith Travel Research.
In year-over-year measurements, the industry’s occupancy declined 0.5 percent to end the week at 42.6 percent. Average daily rate dropped 5.2 percent to finish the week at US$87.98. Revenue per available room for the week decreased 5.6 percent to finish the period at US$37.47.
The 0.5-percent occupancy decrease was the best full-week performance of the year for that metric. The 5.2-percent ADR drop was the third best full-week performance of the year behind two consecutive weeks in January. The 5.6-percent fall in RevPAR was the best full-week performance of the year.
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New York City’s amended hotel occupancy tax is being questioned. Online travel agencies, the American Society of Travel Agents and the U.S. Tour Operators Association filed a lawsuit against the city Monday, challenging the legality and constitutionality of the tax, which requires resellers of New York hotel rooms to remit a tax based on the full retail rate paid by the customers as a “condition of occupancy,” including some service fees and charges, according to Travel Weekly.
The new tax "illegally attempts to extend the New York City hotel room occupancy tax to amounts charged by third-party travel intermediaries for their services," the lawsuit claims. The tax went into effect 1 September 2009.
In other OTA legal news, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld a lower court dismissal of a lawsuit filed by Louisville/Jefferson County and Lexington/Fayette Urban County in Kentucky alleging that online travel companies should be liable for local occupancy taxes, the Interactive Travel Services Association reports. The district court granted the OTCs’ motion to dismiss, reasoning that because the OTCs lack ownership and physical control over the rooms rented, they do not constitute “like or similar accommodations businesses” within the purview of the ordinances in question. As a result of this decision, the counties are not collecting transient room taxes on the difference between the two rates.
The Interactive Travel Services Association represents U.S. online travel merchants and global distribution systems.
The hotel rates and airfares paid by financial services clients has started to rise this quarter, according to a new analysis from Ovation Travel, a Manhattan-based corporate travel firm that manages travel for many Wall Street firms, a USA Today blog reports.
Among Ovation's clients, the average financial services traveler is paying US$306 per night this quarter to sleep, according to Ovation's data. That's 7 percent more than last quarter—and the first time that the average rate topped US$300 this year, according to the Hotel Check-In blog from Barbara De Lollis.
Las Vegas Sands Corporation Chairman Sheldon Adelson on Monday said he expects to resume construction on the delayed resort projects in Macau in about five months, with the first two phases of the project to be completed by the end of 2011, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The 467-room Wyndham O’Hare in Rosemont, Illinois, abruptly is shutting its doors, Crain’s Chicago Business reports.
The hotel will close on or about 1 January, says Jack van Hartesvelt, executive VP and principal at Kennedy Associates Real Estate Counsel L.P., a Seattle-based pension fund adviser that owns the hotel through an investment fund.
Compiled by Stacey Higgins.
