Global hotel rates saw a “sharp acceleration” during the first
quarter of 2026, with prices up by 7.2 percent year-on-year to an
average of $189 per night, according to the latest analysis by hotel
booking specialist HotelHub.
The quarterly HotelHub Index analysed 1.78 million bookings made through the firm’s platforms between January and March.
U.S. rate increases overall were roughly "in line" with the global average at 7.6 percent year on year to an
average of $226 per night. It also noted, however, that bookings to the U.S. through its
platforms were down by 12 percent compared with Q1 of 2025. That demand reduction may account for the fact that rate increases in nearly every gateway city HotelHub analyzed failed to reach the overall average increase: Atlanta saw an 4.99 percent rate YOY for the quarter, Chicago rates rose 2.95 percent, New York was up 5.01 percent, Seattle only 1.09 percent and Washington, DC just 2.01 percent. Los Angeles was the only gateway U.S. city that reached above the average rate increase to 8.18 percent
European cities were a different story, with much steeper-than-average YOY increase in hotel rates during the quarter at 13.9 percent. The average rate jumped from $154 in Q1 of 2025
to $175 this year.
HotelHub’s data found that the increase in rates was “even more
pronounced” in some European cities, with Milan’s average rate rising 29
per cent from $195 to $253 as the Italian city played host to the
Winter Olympics during the quarter. Other European
destinations to see steep rises in Q1 included Stockholm with a 22.1 percent year-on-year increase to $195 and Amsterdam where prices were up
by 18.6 percent to $253.
London’s hotel
rates rose by 7.9 percent to $324 during the quarter, while Paris
recorded an 11.4 percent increase to $246 and Berlin’s rates soared by
15 percent to $186.
The
impact of the Iran war, which started on 28 February, caused bookings
to the United Arab Emirates to plummet by nearly 77 percent in March,
compared with the same month in 2025. Average hotel rates in Dubai fell
to $222 per night during March, compared with $307 in February.
But
other destinations saw higher year-on-year bookings in Q1, including
Canada with a 5.2 percent rise, Australia was up by 4.3 percent and
China saw 4.2 percent increases on average, according to HotelHub’s data.
Booking Trends
Despite
global hotel rate increases, HotelHub said its data does not show any
signs that business travelers have been downgrading on the quality of
properties they are staying in.
The proportion of
five-star hotels being booked rose slightly year on year, by 0.15
percentage points to 12.13 percent, while four-star properties
accounted for 44.9 percent of bookings in Q1 of 2026, up from 44.6 per
cent in the same quarter of 2025.
HotelHub added that average length of stay had reduced
from 2.5 days in Q1 of 2025 to 2.43 days in Q1 of 2026, which had helped
to limit the increase in average spend per booking to 4.6 percent.
“The
growing instability over the last few months has not produced
favorable conditions for business travelers and, while this dataset
only covers the first few weeks of the latest hostilities in the Middle
East, it seems unlikely that things will get easier in Q2," said HotelHub chief commercial officer Paul Raymond. “However,
the real takeaway here is how travelers are negotiating the current
situation. The business world is still moving, it’s just finding savvier
ways to make budgets stretch—whether that’s compressing trips into
fewer days or shifting to more affordable destinations.”