U.S. hotel performance continued to outpace 2025 in the week of May 3-9, with revenue per available room increasing 2%, the fifth consecutive week of growth and the 12th gain in the past 14 weeks.
Growth was again led by hotel rates, as U.S. average daily rate increased 1.7%, extending its current growth streak to 10 weeks. However, ADR has grown below the rate of inflation in five of those weeks.
Total hotel room demand increased 0.8% for the week, contributing to year-to-date gains that now exceed 8 million additional rooms sold compared to 2025, with nearly half of that increase occurring over the past four weeks. Transient demand remained the primary driver, rising 1.7% for the week and increasing in all but three weeks this year. Gains were broadly distributed across hotel classes, with every class except economy adding more than 500,000 rooms sold. Upper-midscale and upscale segments led this expansion, accounting for more than 60% of the additional room nights.
This week’s gains were also seen across most hotel types as every class except economy reported year-over-year RevPAR growth. Luxury hotels continued to lead, with RevPAR increasing 4.3%, driven by a 4.7% rise in ADR. Year to date, luxury ADR is up 5.4%, making it the only class with rate growth exceeding inflation. The next closest was upper upscale, where ADR has risen 2.3% year to date.
Group demand at luxury and upper-upscale hotels declined 2.6% last week, ending a three-week growth streak supported by easy comps to Easter 2025. Unlike transient demand, group performance remains uneven, as shifts in conference calendars continue to drive week-to-week volatility. These fluctuations have largely offset each other, leaving year-to-date group demand up a modest 0.9% among hotels in the luxury and upper-upscale classes.
At the market level, performance was also uneven across larger markets, as variability in group demand offset event-driven gains. The top 25 U.S. hotel markets combined for a flat weekly RevPAR increase of 0.2%, as conference calendar shifts created headwinds for some of the largest markets despite strength in others.
Miami led all top markets with a 22.7% increase in RevPAR and a 17.8% rise in ADR, supported by the Consensus crypto conference following the Formula 1 race weekend. Chicago also recorded a 15.8% increase in RevPAR, driven by multiple overlapping conventions. Because of the strong convention calendar, Chicago saw it largest amount of weekly demand of the year so far.
In contrast, Tampa, Boston, and Las Vegas posted year-over-year declines due to difficult comparisons against conference-driven demand in 2025. Combined, these markets saw RevPAR fall 12.2%, with room demand declining 7.2% compared to last year. Excluding these three markets lifts total U.S. RevPAR growth to 3.3% and overall room demand growth to 1.3%, highlighting the outsized impact of a few large underperformers.
The top 25 markets also saw performance declines across some of the highest growth markets so far in 2026. Nashville, Minneapolis, San Diego, and San Francisco all posted RevPAR declines, marking the first week this year that all four markets decreased simultaneously. These underscore the impact of conferences on these markets, all but San Diego would have seen RevPAR growth if their main conference submarket had been flat.
This week’s RevPAR growth was led by markets outside the Top 25, where 67% of markets reported RevPAR growth and 30 markets recorded double-digit increases. These markets collectively increased RevPAR by 3.7%, providing a more stable contribution relative to the volatility seen among larger markets.
The strongest gains were event-driven, with the Welcome to Rockville festival lifting Daytona Beach RevPAR by 84.6%, the BTS World Tour contributing to a 57.4% increase in El Paso, and the Sonsio Grand Prix driving a 46.6% gain in Indianapolis.
Global RevPAR regains positive footing
While the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries continue to be severely affected by the Iranian war, the rest of the world, excluding GCC, saw same-store hotel RevPAR rise 5% in the week, its fourth consecutive weekly gain.
The growth was led by China, where RevPAR was up 14.3%. India and the Caribbean also saw double-digit RevPAR gains. Strong growth was seen in France, Germany and Japan where RevPAR was up by more than 6%. Most of the RevPAR gainers were led by ADR with only France and India driven by demand growth. With GCC, global same-store RevPAR was up 0.9%.
China’s outside ADR growth (+11.9%) was led by smaller resort markets due to the Labor Day holiday (May 1-5). The strongest ADR growth was seen on Sunday, May 3, and Monday, May 4, where it grew by more than 20%. Without China, global hotel RevPAR with GCC would have been down (-0.8%) and less positive without GCC (+3.8%).
Mexico continued to see ADR-led RevPAR declines. ADR fell by more than 15% this week in Baja California, Mexican Caribbean, and Pacific Central markets. As in prior weeks, the largest ADR decreases were seen in luxury and upper-upscale hotels.
While RevPAR in the United Arab Emirates has fallen by more than 60% over the past nine weeks, hotel occupancy has been slowly rising. Nine weeks ago, UAE hotel occupancy stood at 26.6%. This week it reached 46.4%, its highest level since the start of the Iranian war. ADR also improved slightly, falling by 33.6% versus the 46.4% decrease a week ago.
Cole Martin is Analytics and Insights Specialist at STR and Isaac Collazo is senior director of analytics at STR.