U.S. Hotel Openings, and Construction Starts Largely on Pace Quarter-Over-Quarter 2020

NATIONAL REPORT—Lodging Econometrics (LE) has been actively tracking hotel opening and construction start timelines since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in its live database of hotel and contact records. LE’s new Development Timeline Changes feature, as part of its database, is essential for monitoring the status of projects and determining the updated timeline for project completions, especially now as some projects have been postponed or delayed. According to LE’s latest report, the U.S. Construction Pipeline continues to move forward with nominal delays to opening and construction start timelines.

At the end of September 2020, LE reported a total of 5,288 projects in the construction pipeline in the U.S. There are 1,611 projects under construction, 2,185 are scheduled to start construction in the next 12 months, and another 1,492 are in the early planning stage. From Q2 ‘20 to Q3 ‘20, for projects that are currently under construction, 10% are actually scheduled to open sooner than their Q2 ’20 estimated open date. Forty-five percent of projects under construction had no change to their opening date, 29% had their opening timeline extended by three months or less, 12% were pushed out three to six months, and 4% of projects under construction will open more than six months out from their Q2 ’20 estimated opening date. The majority of the projects with opening delays up to six months are upscale and upper-midscale projects.

Forty-five percent of projects under construction in the top 25 markets had no change to their opening date, and only 4% of projects within these 25 markets extended their opening date beyond six months from their Q2 ’20 estimate.

Quarter-over-quarter, combined, projects scheduled to start construction in the next 12 months and those in early planning have also had nominal delays of only a few months to their construction start or opening dates. Fifty-five percent of projects in these two stages of the pipeline had no change to their construction start timelines. Most other projects that have construction start delays are delayed by six months or less. More than 58% had no change to their opening date since Q2 ‘20. A sign that developers are confident construction will continue on pace over the next year.

From Q2 ’20 to Q3 ’20, upscale and upper-midscale projects scheduled to start in the next 12 months, and those in the early planning stage, are largely delayed by three to six months, similar to projects under construction. In the top 25 markets, 57% of the projects scheduled to start in the next 12 months and in early planning had no delays to their construction start dates quarter-over-quarter. Twenty-three percent of projects had a shift in construction start timeline by up to six months, 8% percent were delayed by six to nine months, 9% percent were extended out past nine months, 2% of projects are scheduled to open sooner than their estimated Q2 ’20 date and 1% of projects have become inactive.

For a demonstration of LE’s database and its new development timeline changes feature or if you have any questions about the data contained in this Q3 ’20 report, please contact us at
+1 603.841.8740 ext. 0025 or [email protected].

—JP Ford, ISHC, SVP, Director of Global Business Development, Lodging Econometrics

—Bruce Ford, SVP, Director of Global Business Development, Lodging Econometrics

—Tom O’Gorman, Vice President of Sales, Lodging Econometrics

—April Bedell, Sales Account Executive, Lodging Econometrics

—Carlos Quinones, Account Manager, Lodging Econometrics