One month of hotel performance data does not a trend make, but the year is getting off to an encouraging start.
That's the takeaway from the latest episode of Tell Me More: A Hospitality Data Podcast.
Hotel room demand in the U.S. grew 0.5% in January compared to the prior year, a number that co-host Isaac Collazo, STR's senior director of analytics, said was the first monthly increase in room demand since March 2025.
And it's representative of positive demand green shoots Collazo said he's seeing around the country, despite disruptors like Winter Storm Fern, which brought significant ice and snow to a broad swath of the country in mid-January, disrupting travel.
Collazo cautioned, however, that this is just a start, and the optimism centers on demand, not revenue per available room just yet, though January did come in with 0.4% RevPAR growth, the first positive value since March 2025.
Also in this episode
- Nearly every chain scale saw demand grow in January, except economy.
- Co-host Jan Freitag, CoStar's national director of hospitality analytics, highlighted recent research around occupancy at hotels near data center construction projects.
- Collazo shared CoStar and Tourism Economics forecast information focusing on the potential RevPAR lift expected during this summer's FIFA World Cup 26 months.