Questioning Hilton Data in HMM 2011 U.S. Hotel Brands Survey

Hotel and Motel Management released a 2011 U.S. Hotel Brands Survey yesterday showing Hilton Hotels as the #1 U.S. hotel brand (by rooms) with 192,413 guest rooms and 540 hotels.

Loyalty Traveler just happened to have spent the past couple of weeks independently studying hotel brand size. My readers know my love for numbers (mostly counting points, but also hotels) and this survey is a data mining field for me. However, I question the first row of data for Hilton Hotels in the HMM 2011 U.S. Hotel Brands Survey. I think the first line of this survey shows the editorial staff stepped on a data land mine with this survey release. [Click on picture image to open full size image in new window.]

My analysis shows Hilton data shown in the HMM survey appears to be global numbers of rooms and hotels, whereas the other brands shown are based on rooms and hotels only in the U.S.

Here is the data from Hilton Hotels About page:

Hilton Hotels brand may very well be number 1 in the U.S., but we need an apples to apples comparison to know for sure. Those 192,000 rooms and 540 hotels in the Hilton Hotels brand appear to include the number of hotels and rooms from 75 other non-U.S. countries. The other brands shown appear to only include the U.S. rooms and hotel count data.

I know how difficult Hilton’s website and financial reports make hotel counts for Loyalty Traveler. Hilton drives me crazy with the challenge of counting hotels and finding hotel reward category assignments for HHonors properties.

All in all, I find this a useful survey for hotel industry brand data. The front line Hilton Worldwide data just needs fine tuning for accurate brand representation of U.S. hotels only.

Source: HMM 2011 U.S. Hotel Brands Survey (pdf file)