STR: Hotels Rebound In Houston, New Orleans, San Francisco

Houston, New Orleans and San Francisco have posted the strongest year-over-year hotel occupancy and room revenue increases so far this year, while markets including Phoenix, Boston, Nashville and Virginia's Norfolk-Virginia Beach area have taken the biggest hits, according to data released Tuesday by Smith Travel Research.

Smith Travel Research reported occupancy rising in New Orleans by 11.2 percent, and in both Houston and San Francisco by 1.3 percent, the only three of the top 25 lodging markets in the United States to post annual year-to-date occupancy increases by the end of October, compared with the same period last year. The three cities also had the largest year-over-year increases in revenue per available room for the first 10 months of 2008, with New Orleans up 13.2 percent, Houston up 11.2 percent and San Francisco up 7.8 percent.

New Orleans' average daily rates, however, increased only slightly by 1.8 percent, according to Smith Travel Research. Along with Houston, where rates have increased by 9.8 percent, and San Francisco, where rates have increased by 6.4 percent, the top-performing market in terms of rate was Denver, where rates increased by 7.2 percent. None of the top 25 markets have seen rates decrease through the end of October.

"Houston continues to outperform the rest of the top 25 because of the displacement of Hurricane Ike and the relative strength of the oil industry," Smith Travel Research vice president of global development Jan Freitag said in a statement. "New Orleans appears to have gotten back on the schedule for larger groups, as its RevPAR and occupancy indicates."

Meanwhile, both Phoenix and the Norfolk-Virginia Beach market experienced considerable drops in RevPAR and occupancy. In Phoenix, occupancy dropped by 10.2 percent and RevPAR dropped by 6.2 percent. In Norfolk-Virginia Beach, occupancy dropped by 8.9 percent and RevPAR dropped by 7.9 percent.

Boston also had a 4.6 percent decrease in RevPAR, while occupancy decreased 7.1 percent in Nashville.