Nashville hotel prices hit their highest point ever last month: The average daily rate in October for the region was $162.55 per night, according to the travel data company STR.
October also marked the highest-ever hotel revenue and number of room nights sold.
“When I saw the numbers a week or so ago, I just chuckled,” said Butch Spyridon, head of the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp. ”It’s got a life of its own right now.”
He says October is often the busiest month of the year, between big Vanderbilt and Titans football games, fall festivals and conventions. “It’s the perfect storm for our industry,” he says.
And the fact that this October was particularly busy was not a surprise to him: Just look at the Nashville airport, which keeps
breaking its own records for passengers coming into Middle Tennessee.
But that trend doesn’t necessary mean prices will continue to rise. In fact, in 2018 so far, supply is growing faster than demand, thanks to more available hotel rooms. Nearly 30 more hotels are under construction right now, according to the Convention and Visitors Corporation.
Which means, Spyridon says, hotel prices should flatten out — finally. Though he acknowledges he’s been predicting that they will for a couple of years. (“We’ve got about another year,”
he told WPLN in October 2016.)
“But this year — or 2019, in particular — we will see much more normalization on the rate side,” he says.
Then he adds, with a laugh: “It has to.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story said October also marked a record occupancy rate. In fact, it was the second-highest, after October 2015.
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