NEW YORK—Hotels in major North American markets are continuing to experience solid growth in both rate and occupancy across all travel segments, according to data from the September 2014 TravelClick North American Hospitality Review (NAHR). This sustained growth is enabling hoteliers to reduce transient discounting, paving the way for even stronger revenue per available room (RevPAR).
“We’re starting to see an emerging trend toward the reduction of transient discounting for RevPAR improvement,” said John Hach, senior vice president, global product management of TravelClick. “When demand is strong and sustainable, savvy hoteliers actively manage to minimize discounts for increased RevPAR performance. We anticipate this trend to continue, especially in markets experiencing strong group advance reservation volume. Ultimately, hoteliers are setup to generate more revenue for the remainder of this year into 2015.”
For the next 12 months (September 2014—August 2015), overall committed occupancy is up 4.4 percent when compared to the same time last year. ADR is up 4.1 percent based on reservations currently on the books.
Transient bookings are up 6.9 percent year-over-year and ADR for this segment is up 5.1 percent. When broken down further, the transient leisure (discount, qualified, and wholesale) segment is showing occupancy gains of 6.6 percent and ADR gains of 5.3 percent. Transient business (negotiated and retail) segment occupancy is up 7.3 percent and ADR is up 5 percent. Group segment occupancy is ahead by 3.3 percent and ADR is up 1.8 percent, compared to the same time last year.
“The group segment really stands out in Q3, particularly the pace of group bookings in September. It will be interesting to see if this segment growth becomes a positive trend or if it will flatten out over time. Regardless, September is netting out to be an extremely strong month across the board, hoteliers are on track to experience a 14 percent increase in RevPAR. We expect to see this momentum positively impact the majority of key markets throughout North America.”
