In the first quarter of 2021, the US hotel industry opened 229 hotels with 27,528 rooms. This emerges from the latest US Construction Pipeline Trend Report from Lodging Econometrics. Branded hotels from Marriott International, Hilton Worldwide and IHG Hotels & Resorts made up 73 percent of that total, with 167 new hotels with 20,164 rooms.
Looking at the entire U.S. hotel construction pipeline as of March 31, Marriott has the most rooms under development at 178,290, followed by Hilton at 145,256 and IHG at 81,702. These three companies account for 65 percent of the total space in the US pipeline.
The brands with the largest US pipelines are currently the Hilton Home2 Suites with 39,243 rooms, followed by IHG’s Holiday Inn Express with 30,085 rooms and the Hampton Inn by Hilton with 29,193 rooms.
The total US construction pipeline amounted to 4,967 projects with 622,218 rooms at the end of the first quarter. While this is a “slight decline” in the pipeline from year to year, “it’s not unexpected given the lockdown and travel restrictions last year,” according to Lodging Econometrics. However, with the late openings going online in the fourth quarter of 2020, the company predicts a 2 percent increase in the supply of new hotels by the end of 2021.
Of the 1,866 projects slated to begin in the next 12 months, 26.8 percent are long-term brands, “a segment of the industry that developers have become increasingly interested in in recent years,” according to Lodging Econometrics.
By city, New York led the most projects in the US construction pipeline with 145 projects for 24,762 rooms. Los Angeles followed with 23,994 rooms, then Dallas with 16,260 rooms, Atlanta with 18,264 rooms and Orlando with 17,536 rooms.
The 50 largest US markets announced a total of 74 new projects, which accounted for 10,219 rooms in the first quarter, according to the report. Additionally, according to Lodging Econometrics, it’s not surprising that renovation and brand conversion activity has increased in the top 50 markets. In the first quarter of 2021, 1,198 projects with 190,475 rooms were in the renovation and conversion pipeline. There are more than 10 US markets with more than 15 major renovation and remodeling projects led by Houston with 27 projects and Los Angeles and New York with 22 projects each.
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