I spent about an hour last night searching around. The hospitality industry is really feeling itself right now. Rinky-dink 2-star hotels with no amenities to speak of are charging stupidly high rates. The Austin Hilton has rooms open - for $338 a night. I went to the Austin tourist website and searched hotels there. They have more than 200 hotels in their database. All but 2 have no rooms available. There must be a couple dozen other conferences and 147 music festivals going on while we will be there. It's going on here in Charlotte too. We got a Ritz-Carlton here a few years ago. Now there are about 10,000 hotel rooms under construction, and every one of them is going to be priced so high that the Ritz is a Days Inn by comparison.
I'm not sure what's driving this, but it appears to be the same thing that is driving the residential housing markets as well. The only things being built these days are for people that make at least $250K a year. Nothing is being built that people like us can afford, be it home or hotel room. Frustrating......
James G Edgar, CAP OM