The U.S. lodging industry will achieve 65 percent occupancy in 2015, the highest national occupancy rate since STR, Inc. began reporting data in 1987, according to the recently released September 2014 edition of PKF Hospitality Research’s (PKF-HR) Hotel Horizons®

The U.S. lodging industry will achieve 65 percent occupancy in 2015, the highest national occupancy rate since STR, Inc. began reporting data in 1987, according to the recently released September 2014 edition of PKF Hospitality Research’s (PKF-HR) Hotel Horizons®. (PKF-HR is a CBRE company.) By year-end 2015, PKF-HR projects that the demand for lodging accommodations will have increased 25.8 percent since the depths of the recession in 2009, while the supply of hotel rooms will have grown by just 5.6 percent.

“Given the spreading economic improvements, it is not surprising that we are now seeing secondary markets like Memphis, Richmond, and Raleigh-Durham lead the nation in projected occupancy gains in 2014”

“An ever-improving economy, and the favorable relationship between supply and demand, has led to significant growth in both revenues and profits from 2009 to the current year. We expect this trend to continue through 2017,”

said R. Mark Woodworth, president of PKF-HR. “The 1990s were the only other time we observed such a sustained confluence of positive economic and market conditions.”