Hotel performance hit all-time highs in February thanks to the Super Bowl in Las Vegas, helping the industry gain ground after a less-than-stellar January.
In the latest episode of "Tell Me More: A Hospitality Data Podcast," CoStar National Director of Hospitality Analytics Jan Freitag and STR Vice President of Analytics Isaac Collazo unpack the year's hits and misses so far.
The Super Bowl was a standout, notching the highest average daily rate and revenue per available room among all of the big game's host cities. And Las Vegas recorded the highest-ever ADR on any Saturday and Sunday in the U.S., excluding Hawaii.
"Las Vegas was very exciting," Collazo said, and he gave a firsthand account of the city's vibe the week before the event.
"There was a lot more going on in those days leading up to the Super Bowl than I've seen on previous occasions," he said. "It felt like a normal convention week in Las Vegas."
But while game weekend boosted overall U.S. hotel performance significantly, the year so far hasn't been all STR forecast it to be. STR is CoStar's hospitality analytics division.
"We were certain RevPAR would grow 2.3% in January; it only grew 0.9%," Collazo said. "It's coming ... still from the economy chain scale."
He called the "demand leakage" coming from the economy segment "perplexing," and a topic STR continues to analyze.
But despite some of the performance dings the industry suffered in January, analysts are confident about the first quarter.
"From a data perspective, if we're suggesting that January came in a little bit below expectations, the good news is February is coming in well above expectations," Freitag said. "Overall, that leaves me with [the first quarter] being pretty good."
Freitag said that Oxford Economics "keeps continuing to tweak their GDP forecast, and they have actually revised it upward."
"Right now GDP is expected to grow essentially the same as it did last year, with a very strong first quarter and a strong-ish second quarter," Collazo said.
More From This Episode
Other topics in the episode include:
- A deeper look into January industry performance broken down by chain scale.
- What to expect from Easter calendar shifts at the end of March.
- Takeaways from the latest round of public company earnings calls, including a transactions outlook and more on 2024's group business outlook.
- What's fueling investment interest in extended-stay hotels.
- A sneak peek at this year's spring break season.
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