HENDERSONVILLE, Tennessee, and MILWAUKEE—The Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index dropped 3.4 percent in March to a level of 5,355.
“Hotel stocks declined in March as investors digested the potential impacts from the recent banking turmoil, including the likely intermediate-term effects on economic growth,” said Michael Bellisario, senior hotel research analyst and director at Baird. “The global hotel brands declined slightly during the month and underperformed the S&P 500 on heightened macroeconomic concerns and the likely constraints on new-construction financing that could affect the companies’ net-unit-growth outlooks. Hotel REITs also fell during the month but only slightly underperformed the broader real estate benchmark; RevPAR trends were steady through the first quarter, but investors remain skeptical about the near-term outlook and upcoming tougher comparisons.”
“Recent economic uncertainty and the banking crisis did not deter travelers in March, as hotel room demand was nearly equal to the level seen in 2019 and ADR rose well above the rate of inflation,” said Amanda Hite, STR president. “Q1 occupancy and room rates came in ahead of our January forecast, underpinning the resiliency of the traveling public. Against somewhat easy omicron comparables, occupancy was 3.4 percentage points above 2022 while ADR was up 10.4 percent year over year.”
In March, the Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index fell behind both the S&P 500 (up 3.5 percent) and the MSCI US REIT Index (down 3.3 percent).
The Hotel Brand sub-index decreased 2.9 percent from February to 9,926, while the Hotel REIT sub-index dropped 5.1 percent to 1,073.
