After years of meaning to go, I finally made it to the STR Hotel Data Conference earlier this month.
A ballroom full of people who like numbers. Phones up at every chart, heads down taking notes during a GOP (Gross Operating Profit) margin slide, actual applause for forecast bars. I have been to a lot of hospitality conferences. This is the only one where a chart received applause.
Then the President of STR, Amanda Hite, put up the U.S. forecast, and the room got happy. 2026 RevPAR up 4.4%, occupancy at 63.1%, ADR up 3.1%. Coming off 2025, which finished at negative 0.2%, that is a real turn.
It also has an asterisk shaped like a soccer ball ⚽. STR showed the forecast two ways, full year and full year excluding June and July, and the gap between those bars is the World Cup.
STR analyst Jan Freitag then dug a little deeper. Rates held up in World Cup host markets, occupancy did not, and a lot of what was booked was the week of. He also aimed at FIFA’s claim that the World Cup would be like 104 Super Bowls. The math says otherwise. Based on recent Super Bowl room revenue, 104 of them should have generated about $11.3 billion. The World Cup came in at $3.9 billion.
Call it 36 Super Bowls. Still not too shabby!
Of course, Hawaiʻi hosted zero matches.
And 2027, stripped of soccer and stuck with the comps it created, forecasts out at 2.1%.
Other interesting points:
- Record revenue, same margin. U.S. GOP margin was 41.0% in 2019 and 40.4% year to date through May. But that is with ADR up 26% since 2020 and record rooms revenue. The best top line in years bought the industry nothing on margin. Worth remembering GOP sits above insurance, taxes, and debt service, so the owner’s version of this chart looks worse than the operator’s.
- The national number hides a very wide spread. Luxury RevPAR was up 9.9% through July while economy was down 0.1%. That national average looks very different depending on where you sit.
- Booking windows keep compressing. Nearly a third of rooms are booked the week of, two-thirds within a month. That is a domestic short-haul curve, not a long-haul island one.
One thing I kept thinking about through all of this: how much of it actually matters to Hawaiʻi? Travel sentiment, the economy, consumer confidence, all important. But does continental U.S. ADR or a World Cup have a direct impact on a resort in Kāʻanapali? Even the international story they told was about Canada and Europe, which tells you very little about a market whose biggest exposure is Japan.
So use the macro for direction and focus on the micro for forecast. RevPAR growth will likely come from rate, not occupancy. Expenses are still the problem. All relevant here too. But the number you budget against, and defend to an asset manager, is the island number, the submarket number, and the segment number.
Good conference. I would go again, and next time I might even clap for results. But the number would need to at least beat inflation. 🤷♂️
Note: RevPAR, ADR, GOP, GOPPAR. If the alphabet soup is getting thick, we made a cheat sheet.
