The hotel industry has seen a rising trend of weekday travel in 2024, particularly in the top 25 markets.
Several factors are at play, including an increase in hybrid workers, which allows for more flexible travel schedules. However, perhaps the largest contributing factor has been strong growth in the business and group travel segment. Hotel Dive cites Houston as a leader in group and business performance, achieving more than 100% in overall group and business performance compared to 2023. Houston is among other major top 25 cities like Seattle, Nashville, Detroit and Las Vegas who are leading growth in this segment.
Looking closer, weekday travel, driven by increased business/group demand, is causing major spikes in key performance indicators for the region, especially in Q3 and moving into Q4. According to a recent CoStar article, “weekdays belonged to the top 25 markets, which accounted for 93% of growth.” That report went on to say that weekday hotel occupancy in the top 25 hit 77% with RevPAR growing to 4.1%. Houston; Orlando, Florida; Boston; and Los Angeles all saw double-digit RevPAR gains during the weekdays, which also led to double-digit growth for the full week.
Increased group business demand and rising weekday occupancy and RevPAR has supported substantial year-over-year growth for the Houston market in 2024, with some of the most impactful examples highlighted below.
NAPE (Week of 2/4/24): The Downtown/CBD submarket saw RevPAR on Wednesday, 2/7, hit $323 and occupancy peak at 95% due to the presence of the NAPE conference at the George R. Brown Convention Center. In comparison, weekend occupancy for the week of 2/4/2024 averaged 45-50%. This drove a 20-point lift in YOY RevPAR for that week and a 24% gain in Revenue.
HOSA (Week of 6/23/24): This conference for health professionals not only prompted higher KPIs within the CBD, but also spurred similar gains in the Medical Center/NRG and Uptown/Greenway Plaza submarkets. Mid-week, HOSA generated approximately 4,200 rooms on peak, creating compression in the CBD, and extending to surrounding submarkets. Tuesday and Wednesday of that week saw occupancy between 80%-90% and RevPAR reaching over $200.
GasTech (Week of 9/15): GasTech sparked double digit YOY growth across all KPIs for the Houston market overall. In the CBD, occupancy reached 96% on Tuesday and Wednesday and RevPAR hit $311. This is compared to weekend rates of $215, on average, and 65% in occupancy for the week of 9/15/2024. Due to the high level of weekday demand, RevPAR gained a whopping 60.5% YOY for the week, while occupancy increased 29%.
