The U.S. hotel industry's expansion cycle reached 114 months in August, as revenue per available room grew 0.9 percent year over year, according to STR. RevPAR declined year over year only two months during this period, in August 2018 and in June 2019. Occupancy remained flat year over year this August, at 71.4 percent. Average daily rate increased 0.9 percent, to $94.55.
"Even though [August] room demand was once again strong with 2 million more room nights sold than last August, occupancy was flat when compared with last year," said STR SVP of lodging insights Jan Freitag. "As supply and demand growth are basically in equilibrium, all RevPAR growth stems from ADR, and that growth rate has been lackluster. Over the first eight months of the year, ADR growth has been below or just at the level of inflation, which creates quite a bit of pressure on profit margins. This is a trend we've seen across chain scales and classes, and we do not expect the fundamentals to change much moving forward."
Among the 25 markets with the most hotel rooms, Phoenix reported the only double-digit increase in RevPAR, 11.2 percent, and claimed the highest rises in occupancy, 6.3 percent, and ADR, 4.6 percent. Hawaii's Oahu Island reported the second-highest occupancy increase, 5 percent, and the second-highest RevPAR growth, 6.5 percent. Orlando had the largest decrease in occupancy, 3.1 percent, and Seattle saw the steepest declines in RevPAR, 9.3 percent, and in ADR, 6.5 percent.
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