Luxury Hotels Doing Well

As the affluent get affluenter (Wall Street/stock market shenanigans aside), luxury hotels continue leading the pack in hotel spending.

According to the most recent weekly data from the hospitality-industry data company Smith Travel Research, the luxury segment reported the largest increases in all three key performance areas, occupancy (up 4.4 percent), average daily rate (up 4.9 percent) and revenue per available room (RevPAR) (up a hefty 9.5 percent). Thatg's for the week of August 7-13, compared with the similar week last yeart.

Two other hotel segments ended the week virtually flat in occupancy: the economy segment and the mid-scale segment, Smith Travel says. But the mid-scale segment had decreases in both average daily rate (down 2.3 percent) and RevPAR (down 2.7%).

###