Well, now it's official:
hotel room rates are on the rise. Rates have been in the dumps for three long years, but now, according to PKF Hospitality Research and Torto Wheaton Research, they're not just on the way up, they're escalating:
- Room rates across the Top 50 hotel markets in the U.S. will increase by 3.7 percent in 2004, followed by another 4.7 percent bump in 2005. Stronger demand levels, combined with the increasing use of savvy price-setting practices by both hotel chains and individual property managers, are making hotel bargains harder to come by.
New York will lead in the rates, natch, with a 13.7 percent bump (click on chart to see a readable version of the other highest ADR growth cities for '05.) The most expensive cities, they say, will be New York ($236.97), Honolulu ($143.36), and Boston ($132.86), compared to the top-50 average of $102.44. But there are still bargains to be had in the lowest ADR-rate cities of Dayton ($64.15), Albuquerque ($66.26), Charlotte ($67.28), Raleigh ($70.11), and Memphis ($71.22).
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