If it wasn’t already obvious, New Orleans is amid a hotel boom, and NOLA.com has the numbers to back it up.
New Orleans has added 23 hotels since January 2010, ("New Orleans" in this statistic also encompasses adjacent metro areas the North Shore and Jefferson Parish) bringing the total number of hotels in the area to 283. Those hotels hold just under 40,000 rooms, with 1,381 more under construction right now.
What accounts for this boom? Many factors have lured hotel investors, including conventions that had been cancelled after Hurricane Katrina returning to the city, new medical sector developments, and renewed interest among tourists after the Saints' Super Bowl win and even after the 2010 oil disaster.
Large hotels also are experimenting with new brands in New Orleans, including the many brands targeting millennials.
But according to data from Smith Travel Research (STR), from where much of the NOLA.com report’s stats derive, although New Orleans’ amount of revenue generated per room (RevPAR) has seen an overall growth since 2010, the market is down when compared to August of last year—in fact, it has been down every month from last year except in April (which is Jazz Fest month). This perhaps signals a plateau, but it can also show that after an initial boom, the market has steadied a bit.