Hilton Worldwide Brand Size and Average Room Rates in 2016

Hilton Worldwide is now the second largest hotel chain globally by number of hotel rooms in a portfolio of more than 4,600 hotels in 10 different hotel brands, plus Hilton Grand Vacations timeshare properties.

This week on Loyalty Traveler I have compiled data for major hotel chains to examine the size of each hotel chain’s brands and average room rates by brand. I have not done much of this kind of research in the past year after tracking the data regularly for several years. Since 2009 the hotel industry has seen rising room rates and global growth among the major hotel chains. Room rates spiraled out of control in places like San Francisco, Miami, Boston and New York over the past few years and finally the hotel industry predicts 2017 will be stagnant rate growth and points to potential rate drops as new hotels added to the global chains is resulting in supply keeping up with and even exceeding demand in some markets.

Here is my quick list of the top 11 hotel chains globally and their size by number of hotels and rooms.

Loyalty Traveler – Top 11 Hotel Chains Worldwide – rise of the megabrands (Oct 10).

Yesterday I compiled data on Marriott International and Starwood Hotels brand size by number of hotels, average daily rates and occupancy levels by brand for Jan 1-June 30, 2016 based on the hotel chains’ financial reports.

Loyalty Traveler – Marriott and Starwood 2016 Room Rates and Hotel Brand Size (Oct 11).

Hilton Worldwide Brand Size and Average Room Rates Jan 1 – June 30, 2016

Luxury: Waldorf-Astoria and Conrad Hotels are firmly in the luxury hotel market segment.

Upper Upscale: Hilton, Curio Collection, Embassy Suites

Upscale: DoubleTree, Hilton Garden Inn, Homewood Suites

Upper Midscale: Home2Suites and Hampton.

Tru by Hilton and Canopy by Hilton are new midscale brands with minimal presence in the chain at this time. Canopy Reykjavik Iceland is the only hotel open at this time.

2016 STR Chain Scales – hotel industry data company categorizes hotel brands into market segments base on average daily rate.

Data Observations

• 83% of Hilton Worldwide hotels are in the USA at 3,937 hotels with 790 international properties. In early 2014 the proportion was 85%, so Hilton has grown more internationally in past 30 months compared to USA.
• 790 Hilton brand hotels are outside the USA with 326 hotels in Europe, 228 in Americas outside USA, 158 in Asia Pacific and 78 hotels in Middle East and Africa.
• Waldorf-Astoria and Conrad remain fairly small hotel brands in the luxury market segment with each just cracking 20 hotels worldwide. Conrad is mostly in Asia-Pacific.
• Hilton Hotels has 240 hotels in the USA with a large number of rooms on average with over 400 rooms per hotel.
• Hilton in Europe is a relatively large hotel brand with 150 hotels. Only 42% of Hilton Hotels are in the USA and 26% of Hilton Hotels are located in Europe. There are fewer Hilton Hotels in the USA than three years ago.
• Hilton and DoubleTree hotels are truly the international face of Hilton Worldwide.
• Five of the 10 Hilton Worldwide hotel brands are primarily only in the USA. Nearly 95% of the hotels in Hilton Garden Inn, Hampton Inn, Embassy Suites, Homewood Suites and Home2 Suites are located in the USA.
• Hampton Inn at 2,049 hotels is in the small group of super brands including IHG’s Holiday Inn Express (2,456 hotels ), Wyndham’s Super 8 (2,707 hotels).
• Home2 Suites at 93 hotels has seen major growth from 27 properties in the brand 30 months ago Dec 31, 2013. I still have not seen a Home2Suites since the brand launched in March 2011. Home2Suites is the only Hilton brand that earns 5 points per $1. All other Hilton brands earn 10 points per dollar.

High rates in so many places have resulted in me using the purchase of hotel points and a few high value promotions to find hotel rate discounts this past year. Many of my best value extended stays have been through online travel agency hotel bookings that have dropped room rates by more than 50% the hotel’s published rate for some of my stays. At those kinds of discounts I am not concerned about missing hotel loyalty benefits.

While I still primarily plan my hotel stays through hotel loyalty programs, the high average cost of hotel rooms generally means I use three or more different hotel chains to find the best deals each night on my trips. Hilton is one of the chains I used recently for hotel stays in Slovakia at two DoubleTree Hotels. Fortunately, I managed to pay less than $75 per night for my three hotel nights. Quite a bit lower than the average DoubleTree rate of $135 per night reported in Hilton’s 2016 Q2 financial report.