Host Hotels & Resorts Inc HST

Improving Lodging Industry Fundamentals Drive Better Results for Host Hotels

Host Hotels & Resorts, the largest lodging real estate investment trust in the United States, has entered an unprecedented mature stage of its growth cycle. Hotels have one of the highest betas among all REITs and trade up or down on any indication that the US economy is picking up or slowing down, respectively. People need to travel for business when the economy is expanding and want to travel when jobs and income are steady, but travel is one of the first things cut as confidence in the economy falls. Since hotel lease terms are for a single night, occupancy and rates get reset each day and quickly reflect changes in the economy. Prior economic cycles have seen two to three years of falling revenue per available room during a recession, followed by five to six years of high-single- to low-double-digit revPAR growth. Typically, as growth slows, the economy enters a new recession, and the pattern repeats.