Colliers PKF Hospitality Research on Tuesday released a
forecast with heightened expectations for the U.S. hotel industry in 2010:
larger growth in revenues and occupancy and a lower decline in rates.
The firm now projects occupancy this year will increase by
5.2 percent and revenue per available room will increase by 4.6 percent
compared with 2009. PKF’s forecast in May had projected those metrics would
increase by 1.7 percent and 3.4 percent, respectively.
Additionally, PKF said average daily rate this year would be
down by 0.6 percent from 2009 levels, a lesser drop than the 1.6 percent
decline projected in May.
At the same time, the firm lowered its projected
year-over-year RevPAR increase in 2011 to 5.9 percent, down from the forecast
of 7.8 percent in June. “It’s not that we are becoming less bullish on 2011,”
PKF Hospitality Research president Mark Woodworth said in a statement. “It’s
more that the 2010 recovery is happening at a quicker pace.”
The firm’s latest forecast also says average daily rate will
increase by 3.8 percent in 2011 and occupancy will grow an additional 2.1
percent. It also cautioned that “economic headwinds,” such as high
unemployment, lowered airline capacity and the November elections, could cause
the industry to fall short of forecast expectations.