According to the U.S. Construction Pipeline Trend Report by Lodging Econometrics (LE) for Q2 2023, the five markets with the largest construction pipelines are Dallas, Texas, with a record-high 184 projects/21,501 rooms; Atlanta, Georgia, with 141 projects/17,993 rooms; Phoenix, Arizona, with 199 projects/16,107 rooms; Nashville, Tennessee, with 116 projects/15,346 rooms; and Los Angeles, California, with 112 projects/17,797 rooms.
Atlanta has 66 projects scheduled to begin within the next 12 months. Nashville has 51 projects currently in early planning stages. Of the top five cities, Atlanta has the largest combined number of renovations and conversions with 39 projects/4,232 rooms.
For the first half of 2023, the U.S. opened 224 new hotels/27,194 rooms, with another 384 new hotels/48,607 rooms expected to open by year-end. Reflective of the current pipeline, LE’s forecast for new hotel openings will continue to rise through 2025.
At Q2, the top 25 markets in the U.S. are forecast to open 40% of the rooms expected to open by year-end, according to the report. Twenty-six percent of the new hotels forecast to open between now and 2023 year-end are concentrated within ten markets. Of these ten markets, those with the greatest number of new hotels forecast to open for all of 2023 are led by New York with 42 projects/7,192 rooms, followed by the Inland Empire market with 16 projects/1,564 rooms, Austin with 14 projects/2,021 rooms, and Atlanta with 14 projects/1,369 rooms.
In 2024, Atlanta is expected to top the list of new hotel openings with 20 projects/3,198 rooms. At this time, in 2025, Atlanta is forecasted to again lead in new openings with 24 projects/2,829 rooms expected to open.
