LE: Marriott leads U.S. hotel construction pipeline

Marriott International led the U.S. hotel construction pipeline with 1,579 projects and 207,906 rooms at year-end 2019, according to Lodging Econometrics. Hilton and IHG followed with followed with 1,370 projects/152,832 rooms and 943 projects/96,725 rooms, respectively. Sixty-eight percent of the projects derive from these three companies.

The leading brands by project count for these three companies continued to be Home2 Suites by Hilton with 408 projects/42,346 rooms, IHG’s Holiday Inn Express with 379 projects/39,644 rooms and Fairfield by Marriott with 322 projects/31,119 rooms. Together, the three brands claimed 19 percent of projects in the U.S. pipeline. These brands also had the highest number of new openings in 2019, Home2 Suites with 90, Holiday Inn Express with 85 and Fairfield with 64.

Other notable brands in the pipeline for each of these companies are: Hampton by Hilton with 308 projects/31,373 rooms and Tru by Hilton with 300 projects/29,065 rooms; TownePlace Suites by Marriott with 218 projects/22,075 rooms and Residence Inn by Marriott with 214 projects/26,199 rooms; and IHG’s Avid Hotels with 189 projects/17,157 rooms and Staybridge Suites with 150 projects/15,728 rooms.

Overall, the total U.S. hotel construction pipeline stood at 5,748 projects/708,898 rooms, up 4 percent by projects and 6 percent by rooms year-over-year. These counts are just 135 projects/76,649 rooms shy of the all-time high of 5,883 projects/785,547 rooms reached in the second quarter of 2008.

In 2019, 1,017 new hotels/118,674 rooms opened, a 7 percent increase from 2018’s 954 new hotels/112,329 rooms. Of the 1,017 new hotels that opened, 28 percent were Marriott branded, 27 percent were Hilton branded, and 16 percent were IHG branded. Lodging Econometrics forecasted Marriott will open 286 projects/36,767 rooms in 2020, Hilton 284 projects/30,499 rooms and IHG 179 projects/17,667 rooms.