Business activity for US hoteliers rose to a reading of 117.2 in August according to the release of the Hotel Industry’s Pulse (HIP) indicator. e−forecasting.com’s HIP – a predictive analytic which gauges monthly overall business conditions for hotels – edged by 0.1% in August after an increase of 0.1% in July. The index is set to equal 100 in 2010.
HIP’s six-month growth rate, which has historically confirmed the turning points in US hotel business activity, posted a positive rate of 0.6% in August, following a positive rate of 0.5% in July. This compares to a long-term annual growth rate of 2%, the same as the 40-year average annual growth rate of the industry’s gross domestic product.
The probability of the hotel industry being in recession, which is detected in real-time from HIP with the help of sophisticated statistical techniques, registered 39.6 % in August, down from 40.7% reported in July. When this recession-warning gauge is near or passes the threshold probability of 50%, the US hotel industry has entered a recession.
“The latest reading of business activity in the hotel industry shows that US hoteliers stayed in stagnation mode in August,” said Maria Sogard, CEO of eforecasting.com. “HIP posted a monthly change of just 0.1% from the previous month, thus it remained within the narrow range of nil to 0.1% for a fourteenth month in a row,” Maria added.
Only one of the three demand and supply indicators of current business activity that make up Hotel Industry’s Pulse (HIP) Index had a positive contribution to its change in August: Total Spending on Hotels (includes non-room revenues). The two of the three indicators of current business activity which had a negative or zero contribution to HIP’s change in August were Hotel Jobs and Hotel Capacity.
“The probability of the hotel industry being in recession also has been in a range between 40% to 46% in the last seven months indicating that the industry is in a major slowdown near the borders of the recession,” said Evangelos Simos, professor of Economics at the University of New Hampshire and editor for predictive analytics databases at e-forecasting.com.
The latest HIP reading will be used to update e-forecasting.com’s total US Monthly Hotel Forecast as well as market level forecasts for the top 25 US markets. The firm also covers EMEA markets via a partnership with HotStats with hotel market profitability forecasts.
For more information on these forecasts which include two-year predictions of occupancy, ADR, RevPAR, online ADR, room profitability and predictive analytics for investing in hotel properties, email info@e-forecasting.com with subject: UShotelforecast.
