Strong Dollar May Be Headwind for U.S. Luxury Hotels

The U.S. dollar has appreciated relative to major currencies such as the euro, pound, and yen, and that dynamic has been changing travel patterns. American tourists enjoy enhanced buying power in Europe and Japan, while many foreign visitors find the U.S. off-puttingly expensive.

Look at U.S. government data to see the pattern. September data from the International Trade Administration (sourced here) shows a 2 percent increase in Americans going abroad compared to September 2019 before the pandemic, while there was a 27 percent drop in inbound international visitors in the same period.

Jan Freitag, Senior Vice President of Lodging Insights for STR and National Director, Hospitality Analytics for CoStar Group, summed things up in a tweet on Thursday.

Here’s that slide from CoStar a bit bigger: