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US Hotels Set Records but High Supply Shows Mixed Results in July

The US hotel industry reported mixed results in the three key performance metrics during July 2018, according to data from STR.  

Compared with data from July 2017, the industry saw occupancy drop by -0.2 percent to 73.6 percent while the average daily rate rose 2.0 percent to $133.44 and revenue per available room increased 1.8 percent to $98.17. July represents 101 consecutive months of year-over-year RevPAR growth for US hotels.

“The heart of the summer vacation season helped the industry establish an all-time record in demand, which topped 120 million room nights sold for the first time in history,” said Jan Freitag, STR’s senior VP of lodging insights. “However, there was enough supply growth (2.1 percent) to outpace the year-over-year increase in demand (1.9 percent), and that led to the first monthly occupancy decrease in the US since last July. That, combined with just a 2 percent lift in ADR, produced our lowest RevPAR increase since April 2017.”

Overall, 18 of the Top 25 Markets reported RevPAR growth with Houston, TX, reporting the largest jump in RevPAR and the second-highest rise in occupancy.  Washington, DC,-posted the steepest declines in ADR while Miami experienced the largest decrease in occupancy.