Here’s some great news to help kick start your weekend. STR’s preliminary numbers for May 2010 are looking as good as they’ve looked in more than a year. The U.S. hotel industry experienced an occupancy increase between 6 percent and 8 percent during the month. The same goes for RevPAR.
Now, it’s important to remember these numbers are only preliminary. We’ll have the official results in a week to 10 days. It’s also important to note they come against frightfully easy comparisons. But as a point of reference, the last time the U.S. hotel industry posted a RevPAR increase of more than 6 percent was October 2007, when the measure rose 8.7 percent to US$71.77.
The total active U.S. hotel development pipeline comprises 3,447 projects totaling 364,612 guestrooms, according to the May 2010 STR/TWR/Dodge Construction Pipeline Report released this week. This represents a 30.3 percent decrease in the number of rooms in the total active pipeline compared to April 2009.
Bank of America and Goldman Sachs are seeking to shed as much as US$5 billion in debt related to the buyout of Hilton Worldwide, according to people familiar with the negotiations, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.
A US$3 billion piece of a mortgage taken out by Blackstone Group LP to finance its acquisition of the hotel chain in 2007 may be packaged and sold as securities, said the people, who declined to be identified because the discussions are private. The banks are marketing more than US$2 billion in mezzanine debt to precede the bond offering, the people said.
Arizona’s travel industry has a message for hoteliers across the country: Keep close tabs on proposed legislation.
The industry, "blindsided" by Arizona’s tough new immigration law, stands to lose US$90 million or more in meetings and conventions business because of it, said Debbie Johnson, CEO of the Arizona Hotel & Lodging Association and the Arizona Tourism Alliance, reports Travel Weekly.
The impact of the immigration law will be felt far into the future because of the lead time of convention bookings, said Steve Moore, president and CEO of the Phoenix Convention & Visitors Bureau.
"When groups cancel or don’t book for this year or next, that means we’re out of their rotation and they may not come back for many years," he said.
Tourist arrivals to 23 of 33 member countries of the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) increased 4.5 percent in the first four months of 2010 compared with the same period in 2009, according to CTO officials, who spoke at a press conference in New York on Thursday as part of Caribbean Week. The figures include a 6.5 percent increase in U.S. arrivals, which CTO Chairman Hugh Riley called “the most reassuring performance of all the major markets.” During the same period, arrivals from Canada slowed, growing by only 1 percent, and European arrivals fell by 4.3 percent, reports TravelPulse.
Compiled by Patrick Mayock.
