For the remainder of 2017, analysts at Lodging Econometrics (LE) forecast another 868 projects/97,386 rooms to open for a total of 1,080 hotels/121,508 rooms this year alone, a 22 percent increase over the total number of openings last year. In 2018, LE forecasts an additional 1,283 hotels/143,038 rooms will open in the U.S.
In the first quarter this year, there were 513 projects with a total of 57,127 rooms newly announced into the hotel construction pipeline according to LE.
In the U.S., 212 hotels/24,122 rooms opened in the first quarter. The majority of these opens (93 hotels/10,018 rooms) were in suburban locations. Almost half of the opens (100 hotels/12,856 rooms) were hotel properties with between 100 and 200 rooms. Nearly 40 percent of these hotels (79 hotels/10,544 rooms) were in a top 25 market.
