In 2019, California set a new record for the number of new hotel rooms opened, according to Atlas Hospitality Group’s “California Hotel Development Survey 2019 Year-End.” During the year, the state opened 11,795 rooms in 92 hotels.
As of year-end 2019, California had 212 hotels with 28,102 rooms under construction, according to the report. There were 1,199 hotels with 159,711 reported rooms in various stages of planning, which represents a 7 percent room-count increase over 2018.
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But, is there a concern of oversupply in the state? According to the report, California has been able to absorb the new room supply thus far. Researchers said that’s one reason the state is able to garner interest from domestic and global investors.
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Drilling into more specific markets, Los Angeles County holds the most rooms under construction (7,030 rooms in 47 hotels), according to the data. During the year, the county opened nine new hotels with 1,167 rooms, a 24-percent room count decrease from the 11 hotels with 1,526 rooms in 2018. The 271-room Santa Monica Proper Hotel was the largest property in the county to open.
Orange County followed with 3,166 rooms in 17 hotels under construction construction. The county opened three hotels with 632 rooms in 2019, a 42 percent room-count increase from the 445 rooms in three hotels opened in 2018. The largest hotel in the county under construction is the 613-room Westin Anaheim Resort. The largest hotel to open in Orange County (and all of California) last year was the 352-room Cambria Hotel Anaheim Resort Area. (The 351-room Grand Hyatt at San Francisco Airport was the second-largest hotel to open in all of California.)
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When looking at the highest number of rooms opened during 2019, the winner was Santa Clara County. The area opened 12 hotels with 1,919 rooms, which was a 954 percent room-count increase over 2018, which saw only the 182-room AC Hotel by Marriott open in Sunnyvale that year. The largest hotel to open last year in the county was the 238-room Hilton Garden Inn in Sunnyvale. At year-end, Santa Clara County had 17 hotels with 2,539 rooms under construction, the largest being the 255-room Ameswell Hotel in Mountain View.