NEW YORK— Average daily rates in the U.S. lodging industry will rise by 3% this year, due to a change in inflation from 1.4% to 2%, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. The increase is a faster than anticipated change in the mix of business verses leisure travel, with a slightly higher proportion of business travel, less “spread” between merchant model price and the rate paid to hotel (PwC research reveals a reduction of almost 5%), and more discipline, in part a result of consolidation, in increasing rate in favorable occupancy periods. “The average daily rate increases are tempering leisure demand slightly,” said Bjorn Hanson, global industry leader, PwC. “But this is partially offset by unfavorable exchange rates slightly increasing leisure travelers remaining in the U.S.” Other positive factors contributing to U.S. lodging demand: include: consumer confidence trending positive: increases in business travel that began in September, with improvement almost every month; a colder, wetter winter in the Northeast; and a sense that room rates will increase in the near future and that current hotel rates are “a bargain” PricewaterhouseCoopers forecasts occupancy will rise from 59.2% in 2003 to 60.8% in 2004, and RevPAR will increase 5.8% in 2004 from $49.19 in 2003 to $52.03 this year.
