January 22, 2014

Mayor Emanuel and Choose Chicago Announce Record Hotel Performance for 2013

Chicago’s hotel occupancy rate highest ever; Room nights are highest in history, with more than 275,000 additional room-nights compared to 2012; Continued Growth in Leisure Segment Yields Record Room Occupancy and Hotel Revenue

Mayor's Press Office    312.744.3334

Today, Mayor Emanuel and Choose Chicago announced Chicago’s room supply is the highest in history with 275,000 room-nights added in 2013, making the city the second largest market in the nation in terms of daily rooms supply. Hotel room demand set a record 9.889 million rooms occupied, a gain of 2.3% over 2012. Hotel occupancy was 75.28%, a gain of 0.2% over 2012, surpassing the previous record of 75.18% in 2007 when the market had over 1.9 million fewer room-nights.

“2013 was a year of records for our tourism industry,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said, “Chicago continues to attract more leisure visitors resulting in record hotel revenue for the city. We look forward to the year ahead as we continue to build momentum overseas and further position Chicago as the premier destination for U.S. travel.”
Leisure visitors occupied 6.303 million rooms last year, a gain of 5.6% over 2012 and a record high. This leisure room demand generated record leisure hotel revenue of $1.18 billion (+8.5%), a fourth consecutive year of positive growth. Total Chicago hotel tax revenue set a record at $105.93 million, a gain of 4.9%, and the second year in a row the total tax has eclipsed $100 million.

The Average Daily Rate (ADR) set a five-year record high with growth from the Leisure segment of 2.7% to $187.20, and Group segment ($205.08), which grew 2.8% over 2012.

The Leisure segment also supported overall revenue per available room (REVPAR) which finished at a six-year high supported by record Leisure RevPAR of ($89.82), a gain of 6.2% with only a slight decline (-2.9%) in Group RevPAR to $53.22.

“We’ve seen tremendous growth in the leisure segment,” said Don Welsh, Choose Chicago President and CEO. “As we look at 2013 hotel performance and the much-anticipated hotel openings in 2014 like Virgin Hotel, Soho House and The Godfrey Hotel, we can see that the market is reacting to the growing demand from leisure travelers. Our sales and marketing efforts both domestically and overseas will continue to raise that bar.”

When Mayor Emanuel took office, he worked with Chicago tourism leaders to create one streamlined tourism organization, which became Choose Chicago. Mayor Emanuel set a lofty goal of 50 million visitors per year by 2020, which would be an increase of nearly 11 million from 2010’s total. With 46.2 million visitors in 2012, the city has already reached 65 percent of the mayor’s goal in just two years.

# # #