Dive Brief:
The global hotel construction pipeline climbed to an eight-year high in 2018, ending the year with 13,573 projects and 2,265,792 rooms in various stages of development and construction, according to Lodging Econometrics' Construction Pipeline Trend Report. This represents a 7% increase in projects and 6% increase in rooms in the pipeline since the end of 2017.
The U.S. led the world in hotel projects (5,530) and rooms (669,456) in development or under construction but is still more than 350 projects and roughly 116,000 rooms short of its 2008 peak. The U.S. accounted for 41% of the global pipeline, followed by China's 20%. New York City, Dallas and Los Angeles were among the top five cities in the world with the most hotel projects in the works.
Four franchises accounted for 55% of all projects: Marriott International (2,544 projects/420,405 rooms); Hilton Worldwide (2,252 projects/333,209 rooms); InterContinental Hotels Group (1,716 projects/249,379 rooms) and AccorHotels (966 projects/177,052 rooms). Lodging Econometrics forecasts an increase in hotel openings from 2,675 in 2018 to 2,844 in 2019, and more than 3,000 in 2020.