Hotel performance came in better than brand and real estate investment trusts previously projected during the first quarter, and that allowed recovering markets to continue improving and those that struggled to try turning things around.
During their companies' respective first-quarter earnings calls, executives at hotel brands and REITs outlined the performance of the markets and market types where they've built their portfolios.
Joan Bottarini, Chief Financial Officer, Hyatt Hotels Corp.
"Performance was led by our full-service hotels, which benefited from strong leisure demand, including at our resorts, which had a particularly strong March. Group [revenue per available room] was up 1.2% in the face of more difficult comparisons in Washington, D.C., due to the January 2025 presidential inauguration."
Mark Hoplamazian, President and CEO, Hyatt Hotels Corp.
"We had several notable openings in our lifestyle brands, including the Andaz Lisbon, which strengthens our lifestyle brand presence in Europe; Andaz Shanghai ITC, a luxurious and modern addition to our already strong brand presence in Greater China; and the Livingston, our first hotel in Brooklyn, New York. These openings reflect our continued focus on expanding our portfolio in high-demand markets with differentiated offerings. With many exciting additions to our lifestyle portfolio slated to open in 2026 and further strengthening our position as a leader in lifestyle offerings at scale.
“We also continue to see strong momentum in our Essentials brands, entering seven new markets during the quarter. This included the expansion of our upper-midscale portfolio with several UrCove by Hyatt openings as well as the third Hyatt Studios property in the U.S. These brands are an important driver of our growth strategy, allowing us to expand our brand footprint in markets where we have significant white space while also offering attractive economic returns to owners."
Geoff Ballotti, President and CEO, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts
“Our three largest states of Texas, California and Florida, which account for one-quarter of our U.S. room count, improved by 800 basis points sequentially from down 11% in [the fourth quarter] to down only 3% in [the first quarter]. The [fourth quarter] strength we saw in our Midwest and industrial states continued into [the first quarter] in Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. … The Midwest, infrastructure states collectively, were up 8% [in RevPAR]. …
“We saw it specifically in states like Texas — which we talked about the combination of Texas, Florida and California improving 800 basis points — but Texas alone was a 700-basis-point improvement, and it was up 2% year over year, which was great to see. And we have 700 hotels in Texas, 2% up for the quarter. That was a big-deal improvement, of course, in California and Florida.
“We saw it, as we talked about across the Midwest, infrastructure states collectively, a big group of them, up 8%. We're seeing corporate contracted in that everyday business pick up. And sequentially, it was both occupancy and rate. We saw nongovernment infrastructure pick up, oil and gas pick up — oil and gas market tracks, which are 12% of our room count, picked up by 400 basis points.”
Jim Risoleo, President and CEO, Host Hotels & Resorts
“RevPAR growth in the first quarter was meaningfully better than expected. Strong rate growth was enabled by resilient demand despite estimated weather impacts of approximately 120 basis points and tough comparisons to last year. We saw particularly strong performance at our resorts in Florida and Phoenix as well as in San Francisco, which benefited from the Super Bowl and the ongoing market recovery. Notably, San Francisco achieved 26% RevPAR growth and more than 70% [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization] growth in the quarter, reflecting continued momentum in the market's recovery. …
“First-quarter transient results benefited from Easter in early April, which compressed spring break demand in March, contributing to 9% transient revenue growth at our resorts. Feedback from our properties indicates that ongoing geopolitical uncertainty supported travelers favoring U.S. luxury destinations over international destinations. As a result, resort properties delivered particularly strong performance in the first quarter.
“Briefly touching on Maui. RevPAR grew 1.5% and total RevPAR grew 1.6% as growth was impacted by the Kona Low rainstorm in March. Prior to the storm, overall demand at our Maui resorts was tracking ahead of our expectations for the first quarter. It is important to note that the impacts from the storm were contained and are not ongoing. We have also seen strong rebookings since the storm. And as a result, we continue to expect Maui to contribute approximately $120 million of EBITDA in 2026.”
Raymond Martz, Co-President and Chief Financial Officer, Pebblebrook Hotel Trust
"And San Francisco was exceptional. While it benefited from the Super Bowl and a large citywide convention that shifted into the first quarter, all segments, including business and leisure transient, were incredibly strong and continue to recover. RevPAR increased a robust 44.5% and hotel EBITDA more than tripled from a year ago, climbing by $11.6 million.
"Los Angeles also recovered sharply from last year's fire-related disruptions with RevPAR climbing 31.5% and occupancy growing more than 16 points to 74.6%. The improvement across L.A. properties was broad-based, helped by a stronger leisure demand, improving entertainment-related group and leisure activity and the ramp-up of our recently renovated and rebranded Hyatt Centric Delfino in Santa Monica. L.A.'s [first-quarter] same-property EBITDA increase, we captured all of the EBITDA loss in the first quarter from last year's fires.
"While San Francisco and L.A. were standout markets, they were far from the whole story.
"Our urban portfolio posted RevPAR growth of 14.3%, total RevPAR growth of 12.9% and EBITDA growth of 55.1% San Diego urban hotels delivered RevPAR growth of 8.7%, driven by a 900-basis-point jump in occupancy, supported by healthy weekend leisure demand. Chicago also turned in a good quarter with RevPAR increasing 5.6%. Washington, D.C., was our most challenged market in [the first quarter], with RevPAR declining 24.1%, reflecting a very difficult inauguration comparison and continued weakness in government-related travel, though we have seen some recent improvements.
"Boston was another softer market with RevPAR down 3%, reflecting a lighter citywide calendar, two major winter storms and the rooms renovation at Revere Hotel Boston Common. We expect both markets to improve in the second quarter given the better event calendars."
Thomas Baltimore Jr., Chairman, President and CEO, Park Hotels & Resorts
“Results were driven by continued strength in leisure demand at our resort properties, where RevPAR increased 7.6% excluding Royal Palm, along with healthy corporate group demand that helped our urban hotels generate over 2% RevPAR growth during the quarter.”
Leslie Hale, President and CEO, RLJ Lodging Trust
“We were pleased to see our urban footprint outperform the broader industry urban markets, with a number of our markets delivering high single-digit RevPAR growth. Notably Northern California achieved outstanding RevPAR growth of 27% benefiting not only from the Super Bowl and the favorable shift of the RSA conference to March this year, but also from the continued expansion of the AI industry, which is driving significant corporate investment and business travel demand broadly across this market in addition to a better overall environment.
"New York City was another noteworthy market during the quarter, with our properties achieving over 8% RevPAR growth driven by healthy corporate and leisure transient demand, a favorable events lineup and the ramp of our high occupancy renovations that we completed last year.
"As it relates to segmentation, business travel saw robust growth during the first quarter, with our business transient revenues growing by 9%, which was largely demand-driven with room nights increasing by nearly 700 basis points. The momentum in business travel accelerated throughout the quarter, underpinned by strong growth in business investment, driven by AI-related spending as well as record corporate profits.”
Liz Perkins, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Apple Hospitality REIT
“Approximately two-thirds of our hotels delivered RevPAR growth year over year despite several markets having challenging comparisons, including wildfire-related recovery business benefiting our California hotels in early 2025 and the inauguration in D.C. This reflects both the diversification of our portfolio and our team's continued focus on hotel and market-level execution.
"Several of our markets stood out as top RevPAR performers in the quarter. Pittsburgh grew 23%, benefiting from multiple sporting events and a strong convention calendar. Alaska grew 21%, driven by strong leisure demand in market, further aided by incremental crew business. Seattle grew 18% with the return of Boeing production business and additional project-related business at a nearby shipyard. Palm Beach grew 16%, continuing to flourish with both strong leisure and business transient demand. And Memphis grew 14%, capturing incremental medical personnel and airline crew business amid increased government demand in market.
“Based on preliminary results for the month of April, comparable hotels RevPAR increased by over 4%. Despite the ongoing benefit in 2025 from the wildfire recovery business in Southern California, we continue to see broad demand strength across our portfolio and additionally benefited from favorable comparisons over a challenging April 2025, which experienced disruption from government policy-related announcements.”
Jonathan Stanner, President and CEO, Summit Hotel Properties
"In particular, the ongoing recovery in business transient travel is driving better midweek performance as RevPAR growth increased 3% for the quarter, and 10% in March in our negotiated segment. This helped drive double-digit RevPAR growth in a dozen of our markets in March, including urban center direct markets such as Baltimore, Charlotte, Cleveland, Miami, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
"As a reminder, we expected our first quarter to be the most challenging of the year given multiple headwinds based on our portfolio. Notably, a difficult Super Bowl comparison in New Orleans, where we own six hotels, and continued weakness in government demand with those related travel cuts not lapping year-over-year comparisons until the March-April time frame.
"In addition, disruption related to Winter Storm Fern and civil unrest in Minneapolis further reduced first quarter reported RevPAR growth. In total, these events created an approximately 140-basis-point headwind to our first-quarter RevPAR growth, most significantly in January and February. ...
"In addition, consumer prioritization of travel and experiences remains paramount, which has driven resilient leisure demand. And finally, improved industry demand has increasingly been driven by the ongoing recovery and acceleration of business travel, which uniquely benefits our urban-centric portfolio."
Bryan Giglia, CEO, Sunstone Hotel Investors
"Our resorts once again led the portfolio with combined comparable RevPAR growth of over 18%. ...
"We were also quite pleased with performance at our wine country resorts, which turned in a combined 34% growth in RevPAR, driven by better contributions from both group and transient business. ...
"Our urban hotels had a noisier quarter as we navigated a challenging Super Bowl comp in New Orleans and weather-related headwinds across the East Coast. RevPAR declined 9.3% in the first quarter across our urban portfolio, but out-of-room spend performed better and limited the decline in total RevPAR to only 2.9%. ...
"In Boston, the quarterly performance was hampered by the severe winter weather that disrupted travel earlier in the year. Overall, we expect the first quarter to be the toughest quarter for our urban portfolio with sequential growth in RevPAR through the balance of the year.
“Our convention hotels turned in better-than-expected performance with RevPAR growth of 5.2%. Performance varied widely, however, as we experienced the push and pull of a few large events. In Washington, D.C., we had a very challenging comp given the inauguration last year. After increasing over 24% in the first quarter of 2025, RevPAR at our Westin D.C. Downtown was 9.8% lower this year due to the tough comp and higher group attrition from the severe winter storms that occurred in the quarter. Despite this decline, our performance was better than expected as stronger transient demand helped to partially offset the sluggish group backdrop in the market."