Analysts at Lodging Econometrics (LE) report that upper-midscale hotel projects are currently the most popular in the construction pipeline. With 2,067 projects/205,662 rooms, the category has the largest project count of any chain scale in the total pipeline. The second largest category is upscale, which currently has 1,246 projects/161,229 rooms. Together, these upper-scale categories comprise 66 percent of all projects in the pipeline.
The brands with the most projects in the upper-midscale pipeline are IHG’s Holiday Inn Express (412 projects/38,160 rooms), Hilton’s Home2 Suites (344 projects/36,074 rooms), and Marriott’s Fairfield Inn (285 projects/27,220 rooms). The top upscale brands are Marriott’s Residence Inn (188 projects/23,725 rooms), Marriott’s SpringHill Suites (147 projects/17,293 rooms), and Hilton Garden Inn (135 projects/17,914 rooms).
As would be expected, these two chain scales are forecasted to have the highest guest room growth rates over the next 2 years. Upper-midscale is forecasted to grow its guest room Census by 5.3 percent and upscale by 5.7 percent in 2017, and by 6.3 percent and 5.8 percent in 2018, respectively.
