North Dakota sees slight uptick in hotel demand

BISMARCK, N.D. – Things are looking up for North Dakota’s hotel industry, after a year of declines.

Hotel demand has seen an uptick since the state reached its lowest point in July, The Bismarck Tribune (http://bit.ly/2pBr6j6) reported.

Last year, rooms filled dropped to 4.4 million from 5.5 million in 2015. Occupancy rates were also down 9.1 percentage points and annual revenue was down 16 per cent.

In the last two months, the industry rose 11.5 per cent compared to the same time period in 2016.

Kelsey Waite, of Smith Travel Research, expects an industry growth equivalent to national rates of 1 per cent to 2 per cent.

The state’s hotel supply has grown to 24,572 hotel rooms, the equivalent of 9 million available rooms for 2017.

“That’s a lot of new supply,” Waite said.

The Bismarck-Mandan market has 39 hotels with 3,510 rooms. The hotels’ occupancy rate is nearly 65 per cent.

The average daily rate dropped 11.2 per cent in 2016. And while demand has come back up faster than oil prices, rates have not.

North Dakota has six projects in the works and four other potential projects for the coming years. The potential projects would bring about 1,000 more rooms, with the majority planned for Fargo.

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Information from: Bismarck Tribune, http://www.bismarcktribune.com