The U.S. hotel industry bounced back in the week of Jan. 11-17 as revenue per available room increased 1.6%. Room demand, occupancy and average daily rate all saw year-over-year growth from the comparable 2025 week.
Through the first three weeks of 2026, U.S. hotel performance continued to mirror the cadence of week-over-week fluctuations observed in 2025. Last year’s RevPAR was a seesaw of double-digit changes in the first three weeks. While this year’s trend is similar, the magnitude of the changes pale in comparison. The primary factors influencing the trends during these three weeks over the past two years is the midweek occurrence of New Year’s Eve and the Martin Luther King Day holiday.
RevPAR growth was nearly even among the top 25 U.S. hotel markets (+3.4%) and all other hotel markets (+3.1%) excluding the 13 markets affected by 2024 hurricanes – where RevPAR fell 15.8% – and Las Vegas, where RevPAR was down 7.1%. Hurricane markets and Las Vegas continue to be headwinds for the U.S. hotel industry, but to a lesser extent than in the prior week. Combined, these markets were down 180,000 hotel rooms in absolute room demand this week, significantly smaller than the 246,000-room demand drag last week. Excluding the hurricane markets and Las Vegas, U.S. hotel RevPAR was up 3.2% on occupancy as demand rose 2.5% and ADR rose 1.4%.
U.S. hotel room demand increased 1.4% in the week, with the gains widespread across most markets. Specifically, 66% of them saw increased demand this week, including 17 of the 25 top markets. Broadly speaking, transient demand was the driver of growth this week, but group demand drove a lot of the growth, especially in several of the top 25 markets.
Luxury-class hotels saw the largest RevPAR growth (+4.4%) followed by upper-upscale hotels (+2.9%) during the week of Jan. 11-17. The luxury segment’s RevPAR gain came from ADR growth while upper upscale balanced with nearly equal gains in occupancy and ADR. Further down the hotel chain scale, RevPAR change linearly declined, with economy hotels seeing the largest decline of 6.1%.
Demand increases for both transient and group were seen in every hotel class, except for economy. Luxury hotels had the largest demand increase of 5.5%, driven by a 7.4% jump in transient demand.
Despite group demand being down overall, it was up in the top 25 U.S. hotel markets. This week’s group leaders included Philadelphia, New York City, San Diego, San Francisco, and five others where group demand soared among luxury and upper-upscale class hotels. Each market saw double-digit percentage growth. In terms of overall demand, St. Louis and Minneapolis also saw large growth, with transient demand the driving factor in Minneapolis and group in Las Vegas. Las Vegas had the largest absolute transient demand growth of 95,000 hotel rooms, but this was canceled out by a decline in group demand of 103,000 rooms.
New York City saw the largest absolute demand growth of any U.S. market, accounting for 13.1% of the industry’s total demand gain. New York also saw a 13.1% RevPAR increase on a 5-percentage-point occupancy increase and an 6.2% ADR increase. NYC’s growth was sustained throughout the week, as RevPAR was up double-digits on both the weekdays (Sunday to Thursday) and weekend (Friday and Saturday).
New York City is currently in the middle of “Hotel Week,” which is a period where more than 150 hotel properties across the five boroughs offer discounts from Jan. 2 through Feb. 12. The promotion had the largest impact on the upscale and upper-midscale hotels, which increased occupancy 7 percentage points and drove RevPAR by 14.2%. New York was also the host of multiple conferences and events this week, driving additional demand. This combination allowed NYC to reach an occupancy of 81%, the third highest behind Palm Beach (82.5%) and Miami (81.1%). Absolute room demand in New York was nearly twice as much as Miami and six times greater than Palm Beach.
San Francisco was another hotel market that stood out during the week of Jan. 11-17. For the 44th consecutive year, San Francisco hosted the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference from January 12-16. This event drove San Francisco’s weekly RevPAR to $497, up 12.6% from last year. For just the days of the conference – Sunday, Jan. 11 to Wednesday, Jan. 14 – RevPAR was $777 and ADR was $865. Compared to conference days last year, 2026 RevPAR was up 11.9%, ADR increased 7% and occupancy rose 4 percentage points.
The 2025 Presidential Inauguration was another headwind for this week. Hotel RevPAR in Washington, D.C., was down 32.1% with weekend RevPAR falling 73.2% and room demand decreasing 20.2%. The inauguration was on Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, so the impact will also be felt in the week of Jan. 18-24, 2026.
A year ago, Los Angeles was in midst of containing the deadly wildfires that began on Jan. 7, 2025. Demand soared in several hotel submarkets including Los Angeles North, Los Angeles Southeast, Pasadena/Glendale/Burbank, and Los Angeles East. Collectively, these four markets were down 18% in RevPAR this week, mostly via falling occupancy. While Los Angeles RevPAR was up 4.2% overall, excluding those four, RevPAR soared 15.6% with strong to solid growth in the remaining six LA submarkets.
History, based on the same calendar make-up, suggests that next week’s performance will be softer than this past week. The 2024 hurricane and 2025 inauguration comps will also dampen performance.
Global hotel performance highlights
Global RevPAR, excluding the U.S. and on a same-store basis, moderated as the measure increased by 2.8% due to slower ADR growth (+3.8%) this week versus the prior one. Most of the key countries continued to see growth except for the U.K., India, Australia, Mexico, China and Germany. This week’s leaders included countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), France, the Caribbean and Africa where RevPAR advanced by more than 12%.
Canada continued to see its RevPAR grow, up 6.5% with Toronto and Vancouver posting high single-digit increases. Montreal saw the measure retreat by 6.7%
U.K. RevPAR has fallen for the past two weeks, down nearly 2% in the fortnight. London and the M4 corridor account for 50 basis points of the decrease along with 28 other markets. Overall, 73% of all U.K. markets have seen RevPAR fall over the past two weeks.
Isaac Collazo is senior director of analytics at STR. Cole Martin is an analytics and insights specialist at STR.