Hospitality Insight

Looking for extensive data on U.S. hotel industry revenues and expenses? Published by STR, the Hotel Operating Statistics (HOST) Study compiles statistics from more than 6,200 hotel operating statements. In addition to revenue and expense data, the HOST Study provides analysis of the current hotel environment, focusing on rooms, food & beverage, marketing, utility costs, property & maintenance, administrative & general, and selected fixed charges.

The 2011 HOST Study can be found on the library’s reference shelf (call number TX901 H695).

U.S. News & World Report has issued their annual ranking of the top hotels, covering 852 luxury hotel properties across 49 popular travel destinations in the United States.

A Hotel Score is calculated for each property, consisting of the weighted average of scores for three components: Awards & Recognition, Hotel Class, and Guest Rating. The number of points earned by the hotel is combined and then divided that by the number of points for which the hotel was eligible. On a given list, hotels are ranked highest to lowest according to the Hotel Score. Hotels with high expert/user ratings and many industry accolades are likely to perform best.

The Top 10 U.S. hotels:

1. Elysian Hotel Chicago – Chicago, IL
2. Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea – Maui, HI
3. Trump International Hotel & Tower, Chicago – Chicago, IL
4. Mandarin Oriental, San Francisco – San Francisco, CA
5. The Fairmont Olympic Hotel – Seattle, WA
6. The Hermitage Hotel – Nashville, TN
7. The Ritz-Carlton New York, Central Park – New York, NY
8. Four Seasons Hotel Las Vegas – Las Vegas, NV
9. Trump International Hotel & Tower, New York – New York, NY
10. The Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort, Naples – Naples, FL

See the full list on the U.S. News & World Report website.

In 2009, a select sample of hotels that routinely offer free services to their guests spent an average of $723 per available room (PAR) to provide complimentary food, newspapers, and cocktails. This is the actual cost to the hotel, not the theoretical retail value of savings afforded to the guest.

The data comes from an analysis of rooms department expenditures for Complimentary Services and Gifts (GSG) at 1,600 properties in PKF’s Trends in the Hotel Industry database. The Trends in the Hotel Industry publication is available in the library (call number TX909 A1 T74). You can also view the Hotel Freebies report on the PKF website.

MKG Hospitality has released its annual rankings of the top global hotel groups and brands. International Hotel Group is the top hotel group by a wide margin, with 647,161 rooms compared to 605,938 rooms for second-place Hilton Worldwide. Wyndham, Marriott, and Accor round out the top five.

As far as hotel brands, Best Western continues to hold the top spot, with 307,155 rooms, although their total number of rooms fell off 0.4% from 2010. Holiday Inn (230,117 rooms) is second on the brand list.

View the full lists on the Hotel Online website.

Using a matrix of 10 data dimensions to determine the cities with the highest long-term potential for hotel investment, the Lodging Market Potential Index can be a critical tool for hotel developers and investors. Developed at The School of Hospitality Business at Michigan State University, the Lodging Market Potential Index provides a systematic and formal analysis of aggregate market potential.

The Lodging Market Potential Index identifies market areas that show long term potential for hotel investment. It enables hotel developers and investors to conduct a relative comparison of the 25 largest lodging markets (as tracked by Smith Travel Research) along 10 diminsions. Dimensions are measured using 30 different indicators and are weighted to determine their contribution to the overall market potential index. The Lodging Market Potential is based on a scale of 1 to 100.

View the Lodging Market Potential Index. The most recent data is from 2010.

The March issue of the Smith Travel Research Pipeline Report has arrived in the library. The STR Pipeline Report provides a monthly summary of the number of pipeline projects, recently opened hotels and the number of existing hotels split by scale, key countries and markets.

Hotel segment information is provided by parent company, chain affiliation, year of opening and phase progression. The STR Pipeline Report is the ideal report for a full picture of the current and future supply within North America, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and Europe.

Copies of the STR Pipeline Report can be found on the Current Periodicals shelf in the library.

Many hotel companies are taking advantage of the private branding movement. Sometimes referred to as private labeling, private branding is when a large retail operation buys from a manufacturer in bulk and puts its own name on the product.

In a recent Hotel Interactive article, Hotel School professor Alex Susskind commented on the effect of private branding in the hotel industry: “If the brand itself has brand equity in the market that people look toward, the decision the hotel makes can transfer to other things.”

For more information on private branding for hotels, read the full article on the Hotel Interactive website.

The Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index ended October at 2,162, a 6.3-percent increase for the month and a 34.8-percent increase for year-to-date 2010.

The Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index from 11/08 to 11/10

The Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index is a co-branded index created by Robert W. Baird & Co. (Baird) and Smith Travel Research, Inc. (STR). The market-cap weighted index is comprised of 15 of the largest market capitalization hotel companies publicly traded on a U.S. exchange and attempts to characterize the performance of hotel stocks. 

An increasing demographic in the lodging industry is the female business traveler. Many hotels worldwide are taking efforts to attract and retain this segment of customers.

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts reports that 35 percent of their business clients are women. Using its Web site, Women on Their Way, Wyndham tries to reach out to prospective female clientele with planing tips and destination profiles.

The Mandarin Oriental in San Francisco reports that the mix at this property is even higher, with women accounting for 40 percent of its business travelers. The hotel’s just-launched Perfect Pair program offers a two-room combo where a woman can have a separate bedroom and office space or, if the kids have joined her on the trip, a second bedroom.

A few hotels in the U.S. have created women-only floors.

For more examples, read the full article from Peter Greenberg Worldwide.

Historical Average Sale Prices per Room

HVS, the world’s leading hotel consulting organization, has analyzed historical trends in hotel prices, including brand rankings. The graph above is one part of the report. To see the rest of the analysis, read the full article. To see additional HVS reports that are available to the Cornell community, contact the Nestlé Library reference team at hotelref@cornell.edu.

The Allison Hotel in Newberg, Oregon is the latest example of a hotel property utilizing a social networking tool for staff operations.  Allison Hotel employees are using the Google Wave to communicate and coordinate their daily activites.

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

Read the full article about the Allison Hotel from the March edition of Hotels Magazine.

2009 has been a memorable year for the hotel industry, and not in a good way. According to a special report from Hotels Magazine, the good news is that 2010 will probably be better, but the bad news is that significant improvement won’t be seen until at least 2011.

Many hoteliers would consider a first half in which things do not get worse to be a victory of sorts. “’Flat is the new up’ is true,” says Adam Weissenberg, lead hospitality analyst for Deloitte LLP. “Up until now, positivity had been if [RevPAR] had decreased less than last month. Occupancy is starting to come up, and rate is holding flat—I think that is good news.”

A November report from the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) found that international tourist arrivals declined by 7% between January and August, but arrivals in July and August exclusively declined by just 3%. For 2010, UNWTO expects moderate growth. For the hotel industry, modest growth in 2010 would be great news.

For more information, read the special report from Hotels Magazine.

Each year since 1976, HVS Consulting and Valuation has researched hotel development costs. The 2009 HVS Hotel Development Cost Survey is now available in the library. HVS compiles the information from their database of actual hotel construction budgets, industry reports, and uniform franchise offering circulars.

The survey considers data for six lodging types: Economy/Budget Hotels, Midscale Hotels w/o F&B, Extended-Stay Hotels, Midscale Hotels w/ F&B, Full-Service Hotels, and Luxury Hotels and Independent Resorts.

The 2009 copy of the HVS Hotel Development Cost Survey can be found the in the Nestlé Library reference collection (call number TX911.2 H674).

Hotel stocks are becoming more attractive amid signs of increased demand. Analysts say now might be a good time to invest in hotel stocks, as businesses again begin to send their workers out to visit clients and an upswing in business travel translates to improved rates. Supply growth appears to also finally be waning, and demand is expected to continue to bounce back.

Goldman Sachs analyst Steven Kent names Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. as his top lodging pick, citing foreign currency exchange benefits, less timeshare earnings and decreased volatility on its fee business.

For more information, read the Forbes article.

Choice Hotels International in March unveiled the first iPhone app from a major hotel company, called Choice Hotels Locator. The free app, which has been downloaded more than 225,000 times and in 73 countries, lets users book rooms from the road by employing the iPhone’s built-in global positioning system technology to automatically generate a list of Choice properties in a user’s vicinity. Users also can search manually by inputting addresses or cities.

Other hotel companies are jumping on the app bandwagon. The Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort recently revealed an app that provides users with specific information on property amenities and a detailed property map with interactive video tour. Omni  Hotels and Starwood are also developing apps.

For more information, view the recent article from Hotels Magazine.

HVS Global Hospitality Services has just released its annual survey of the fees charged by major hotel franchisors in the economy, mid-rate, and first-class market segments. This guide enables hotel owners to easily compare the total cost of one hotel franchise with that of another.

A total of 96 franchise groups, including 25 economy, 29 mid-rate, and 42 first-class franchisors, participated in the 2009 analysis.

Hotel franchise fees are compensation paid by the franchise to the franchisor for the use of the brand’s name, logo, goodwill, marketing, and referral and reservation systems. Franchise fees normally include an initial fee with the franchise application, plus continuing fees paid periodically throughout the term of the agreement.

Find a PDF copy of the 2009 U.S. Hotel Franchise Fee Guide on the Hospitality Net web site.

Revenue Per Available Room: 2005 - 2013

According to Hotel Horizons September 2009 edition, PKF Hospitality Research is forecasting that nine consecutive quarters of declining demand for U.S. hotels will come to an end in the second quarter of 2010. The hospitality industry has been hit particularly hard by the current recession and the recovery of hotel demand will be an important point in the economic turnaround. PKF predicts that we will see this turnaround in the year ahead.

Hotel Horizons is available to students and faculty in the School of Hotel Administration.

According to recent data from Smith Travel Research (STR), the U.S. hotel industry posted declines in all three key performance measurements during July.

In comparison to the same time period for 2008, the industry’s occupancy rate fell 7.3 percent to end the month at 64.1 percent. Average daily rate (ADR) dropped 9.1 percent to finish the month at $97.18. Revenue per available room (REVPAR) for the month decreased 15.7 percent to finish at $62.34.

The Nestlé Library subscribes to several Smith Travel publications, including the Weekly Hotel Review and Comprehensive Pipeline Report.

An analysis of more than one million hotel reviews by the reservation web site hotel.info has concluded that guest satisfaction has risen.

The hotel.info Value for Money Index at mid-2009 reveals some surprising differences to the year-end 2008 rankings. Apparently the economic crisis has resulted in hotel customers giving better value-for-money ratings to hotels than before. The mean value of all customer ratings for bookings in the largest 20 cities around the world improved from 6.69 points at the end of 2008 to the current 7.11 points (out of 10 possible points).

In the U.S., the hotel.info Value for Money Index found that Minneapolis is the top-ranked city in terms of customer satisfaction, replacing Indianapolis, which had been ranked highest in the U.S. at the end of 2008.

Read the full hotel.info press release.