DALLAS—It’s no secret that Asian American hotel owners are a force in the industry, but until now how much of an impact they have has not been quantified. With the release of a new ownership and economic impact study by AAHOA and Oxford Economics, the extent of the group’s influence is clear.
The key takeaway from the study, which was released at the 2021 AAHOA convention here this week: The nearly 20,000 AAHOA members own 60 percent of all hotels in the United States. This translates to 34,260 hotels with 3.1 million guestrooms.
This is truly an American success story, according to Biran Patel, AAHOA’s outgoing chairman.
“When we look back at where so many of us came from—the challenges, the triumphs, the blood, sweat and tears that we poured into our businesses, I cannot say that I'm totally surprised that our community of hoteliers found this level of influence,” he said. “We have the grit and determination to create the opportunities for our own success. And we've done just that.”
Other findings of the survey:
- 3.5 million guests stay at AAHOA hotels each night (that’s enough people to fill all 30 NFL stadiums and all 31 MLB stadiums)
- 1.1 million employees work at AAHOA hotels (as many as FedEx and Home Depot combined), earning $47 billion
- $368.4 billion contributed by AAHOA hotels to the U.S. gross domestic product
- $96.8 billion in federal, state and local taxes
- $50 billion in purchases from suppliers each year
AAHOA interim President Ken Greene said in the past the association has talked about the size and scale of the association—but that isn’t enough.
“Those are big numbers and sort of broad ideas and thoughts to communicate to people that we're trying to advocate to, whether it's federal politicians, whether it's done at the state legislation level or on the local level with brands,” he said. “This study really gets it down to the local level, really understanding the power AAHOA has in terms of its ownership.”
Incoming AAHOA Chairman Vinay Patel said he is looking forward to using the information revealed in the study to help create a stronger hotel industry.
“These are significant numbers,” he said. “These are not hearsay numbers. These are solid numbers that we can take to the bank and say, ‘Look, we have some influence here so let's all work together to see how we can move this industry forward.”
Aran Ryan, director of lodging analytics at Tourism Economics, a division of Oxford Economics, called the numbers quite remarkable: “$680 billion of sales supported by AAHOA hotels annually—by the way that's greater than the global revenue of Walmart,” he said. “4.2 million jobs supported by AAHOA hotels, that's greater than the number of jobs in 36 states.”
The project, according to Ryan, was broken into two phases.
“The first phase was a deep dive on a large random sample of hotels supplied by Lodging Econometrics. Oxford then took the result of that sample and projected it to the full scope of U.S. hotel inventory, state by state, class by class,” he said. “In the second phase, we applied a rigorous economic impact model to quantify has economic impact. The results give AAHOA and its members a powerful way to communicate the scope of their business.”
State Markets
The impact study also broke the numbers down by state. The leaders included Texas, with 89.1 percent of hotels, or 432,956 guestrooms, owned by AAHOA members, and Louisiana, with 88.7 percent and 84,740 guestrooms owned by AAHOA members. Arkansas hotels clocked in at 89.6 percent AAHOA ownership.
“This gives us the real solid numbers—data—that we can go to a state or local politician and say, ‘These are your constituents, these are the folks that are driving jobs in your areas,’ and it's just not just a nebulous, ‘Hey, we own a lot of hotels and we’ve got a lot of numbers,’” Greene said. “It's a very specific number and so I think this is really a game changer for us.”
Next Steps
The results released this week are just the beginning of what will be evaluated, according to Biran Patel.
“In the next few months, you'll hear the economic impact of AAHOA ownership for all 50 states and 100 congressional districts, as well as the impacts economically brought on by COVID-19,” he said. “Having this data at our fingertips will strengthen our voice and our influence with vendors, brands, lawmakers and the industry. This is a time of transition, not only for our nation as we reopen, but also for AAHOA.”
The association said the numbers will be a tool in their fight for a number of legislative moves, including the Save Hotel Jobs Act and the setting of federal per diem rates.
The survey took two years to complete and has margin of error of +/-1.4 percent.