Eight Rules for Competing in Hotel Real Estate Markets

Abstract

Data regarding hotel markets' behavior now exist through more than one complete market cycle, as well as through the wide variety of environmental conditions of the past 15 years. Those conditions include two general economic recessions, two wars, an unprecedented set of catastrophic events, and many local situations that affected travel and hotel-market activity. The knowledge gained from studying hotel markets, however, lies scattered in bits and pieces across the landscape of the professional and academic literature. This report consolidates the lessons of hotel markets in the past two decades. Specifically, the report covers developments in our understanding of hotel space markets, equilibrium in hotel markets, cyclical patterns, leads and lags, overbuilding, hotel capitalization rates, the behavior of transacting parties, and debt-financing alternatives. Given the accumulated information about hotel-market cycles, it seems likely that the industry will not repeat its overbuilding mistake in this or future cycles. In the near future, however, we will be able to observe the nature of a cyclical peak in many markets.