NEW YORK — The co-hosts of "Tell Me More: A Hospitality Data Podcast," recorded a special episode at the NYU International Hospitality Investment Forum this week to unpack the latest CoStar and Tourism Economics U.S. hotel forecast revision, along with other trends and takeaways from the annual event.
Following stronger-than-anticipated hotel demand in the first quarter, CoStar now forecasts 2.8% U.S. revenue per available room growth for the year, a significant upgrade from its prior forecast of 0.6% growth.
Podcast co-host Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality analytics for CoStar, said that hoteliers at the conference stopped him to tell him that the updated forecast is "very much more in line with the realities" they are seeing on the ground.
Freitag and co-host Isaac Collazo, STR's senior director of analytics, also encouraged listeners to put overall macroeconomic trend headlines into perspective for the hotel industry and hotel consumer as much as possible.
"Expectations for summer are very strong," Collazo said. "We've been optimistic and we're optimistic because the stock market is still doing very well, and the majority of travelers tend to be higher-income."
Freitag chimed in that despite the pressures related to overall consumer sentiment being down, things such as elevated gas prices and high costs really aren't putting a dent in U.S. travel demand yet.
Even the realities of still-low international inbound travel to the U.S. aren't dinging the overall hotel performance numbers.
"I'm not so sure all these headwinds that we can draw up actually impact our industry today," he said.
Collazo agreed, reminding listeners that overall trends about consumer confidence are averages.
"We should focus on the expectations of the higher-income groups because that's the group that travels," he said. "Because of that, I do still think summer ... is going to be solid. It's going to be better than last year. Last year was a really weak summer, so anything that takes it a little higher is going to be better."