Minnesota’s Lodging Performance through the First Quarter of 2011

Release Date: Oct 24, 2011

This article and graphs are provided under permission granted by STR (Smith Travel Research, Inc.), the source of the data.

Minnesota’s lodging industry performance for the first quarter of 2011 picked up where it left off at the end of 2010, with continued growth in all six reported lodging metrics. Two sets of graphs illustrate this. The first set of graphs, showing first quarter 2011 lodging changes for Minnesota and other geographic areas, illustrates how Minnesota was nearly identical to the U.S. in the amount of growth in all six metrics: occupancy (+5.7%), room rates (+3.1%), revenue per available room (i.e., RevPAR; +9.0%), revenue (+9.8%), supply (+0.8%) and demand (+6.5%). Minnesota outperformed or tied the 7-state West North Central region in all six metrics. Within Minnesota, the Minneapolis-St Paul Metro market outperformed Greater Minnesota overall, but with substantial variation within the five areas within the Metro market and the five areas in Greater Minnesota.

The second set of graphs shows Minnesota’s monthly year-over-year change in lodging performance for the most recent 12 months, along with quarterly change for the first quarter of 2011. One of the six graphs in this set is shown below, illustrating a 12-month time line of Minnesota occupancy change. For perspective, the first quarter of 2010 (i.e., a year ago) provided the first overall positive quarterly change in lodging performance since the recession took hold of Minnesota’s lodging sector in 2008. At that time (i.e., first quarter 2010), average room rate was the only metric still experiencing negative year-over-year change. The continuing slide of room rates, through the summer of 2010, is illustrated in another one of the graphs in the second set of graphs.