Following is your first look at the weekly United States and Canada hotel data for the week ending 21 May courtesy of STR, the parent company of HotelNewsNow.com.
U.S.: The U.S. hotel industry reported strong weekly performance during the week of 15-21 May 2011, according to data from STR.
The industry’s occupancy rose 6.2% to 65.4%, average daily rate increased 5.1% to US$103.23, and revenue per available room finished the week up 11.6% to US$67.52.
“The U.S. hotel industry reported its strongest weekly performance since early April,” said Steve Hood, senior VP at STR. “We are hoping this momentum will continue through Memorial Day weekend and into the summer travel season.”
Canada: The Canadian hotel industry reported increases in all three key performance metrics during the week of 15-21 May 2011, according to STR.
In year-over-year measurements, the Canadian hotel industry ended the week with a 3.9% increase in occupancy to 66.6%, a 2.2% increase in ADR to CAD$128.01 (US$130.94) and a 6.2% increase in RevPAR to CAD$85.22 (US$87.17).
Commercial mortgage-backed securities loan defaults are likely to exceed 12% by the end of the year, according to Fitch Ratings.
Successful modifications and increasing new issuance will not stem the flow of defaults, Fitch said. Loan defaults in 2010 increased by 20% a year ago.
“Although CMBS loan defaults declined over the course of 2010, it is still too early to predict a meaningful decline,” Fitch managing director Mary MacNeill said in a statement.
Luxury demand is back for the global hotel industry—but so is supply, reports HotelNewsNow.com Features Editor Patrick Mayock.
“The strong demand increase that we see right now and also that we saw in 2005, 2006 and 2007 obviously got a lot of people interested in the luxury space,” said Jan Freitag, VP of global development for STR, the parent company of HotelNewsNow.com. “… Not surprisingly … there are a lot of new rooms coming into the luxury segment across the globe.”
As of March 2011, the Middle East/Africa region posted the strongest growth with a 5.7%, 12-month moving average increase in luxury supply. The Asia/Pacific region posted the second highest growth rate (5.5%), followed by the United States (4.8%), South America (3.9%) and Europe (1.4%).
The U.S. commercial real-estate market is stabilizing while demand grows, according to the National Association of Realtors.
“Job growth creates demand for commercial space, and the economy should be adding between 1.5 million and 2 million jobs annually both this year and in 2012, with the unemployment rate falling to 8% percent by the end of next year,” NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun said in a news release. “Given the minimal new supply in recent years, the rising demand means vacancy rates will be trending down in the commercial real estate sectors. Individual markets are now stabilizing and in some cases rising.”
For the second quarter, NAR forecasts vacancy rates to decline by 1 percentage point in the office sector; 0.9 point in industrial real estate; 0.5 point in retail and 1.1 points in the multifamily rental market.
The advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial United States unemployment claims increased by 10,000 to 424,000 for the week ending 21 May, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
The four-week moving average, however, fell by 1,750 to 438,500. The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate ticked downward by 0.1 percentage point to 2.9% for the week ending 14 May.
Compiled by Shawn A. Turner.