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STR: U.S. Q3 results ‘mostly positive’

The U.S. hotel industry reported “mostly positive results” in occupancy, average daily rate and revenue per available room during Q3 2019, according to STR. Year-over-year, occupancy declined 0.1 percent to 70.9 percent, ADR rose 0.8 percent to $133.25 and RevPAR rose 0.7 percent to $94.42.

“While RevPAR increased slightly, it was the lowest year-over-year percent change in the metric since the first quarter of 2010, and the first quarter during the current cycle to show an increase in the metric below 1 percent,” Bobby Bowers, STR’s senior VP of operations, said in a statement. “While demand growth slowed to 1.8 percent, the industry sold more nights than any other Q3 in history. Keeping in line with that theme, third-quarter room revenue reached $46.5 billion, the highest quarterly room revenue figure in STR’s U.S. database.”

The industry’s current cycle is now at 115 months with YOY RevPAR increases during 112 of those months. This September marked the third instance of a YOY decrease, with June this year and September 2018 being the other two.

“The second month this year with a negative result points to a continued slowdown for the U.S. hotel industry,” Jan Freitag, SVP of lodging insights at STR, said in a statement about the September results.

Top 25 Markets

Of STR’s top 25 markets, Phoenix experienced the largest increase in RevPAR (5.3 percent to $60.57). Houston registered the highest rise in occupancy (4.4 percent to 62.4 percent) and Washington, D.C.-Maryland-Virginia recorded the largest jump in in ADR (4 percent to $148.43).

Seattle and Miami/Hialeah, Fla., tied for the steepest decline—5.1 percent. Seattle also reported the largest drop in ADR (-4 percent to $185.35) and Orlando experienced the steepest decline in occupancy (-5 percent to 69.6 percent).