Durham, New Hampshire USA – Business activity for US hoteliers held steady at previous month reading of 118.8 in September according to today's release of the Hotel Industry's Pulse (HIP) indicator. e−forecasting.com's HIP – a predictive analytic which gauges monthly overall business conditions for hotels earlier than any industry indicator – stalled, posting a nil growth rate in September after a flat performance at a rate of 0% in August. The index is set to equal 100 in 2010.

September US HIP Hotel Industry Pulse Real Time Index Stalls

HIP's six-month growth rate, which has historically confirmed the turning points in US hotel business activity, posted a positive rate of 0.9% in September, following a positive rate of 1.2% in August. This compares to a long-term annual growth rate of 2%, the same as the 40-year average annual growth rate of the industry's gross domestic product.

The probability of the hotel industry being in recession, which is detected in real-time from HIP with the help of sophisticated statistical techniques, registered 34.1 % in September, up from 30.1% reported in August. When this recession-warning gauge is near or passes the threshold probability of 50%, the US hotel industry has entered a recession.

"In the last twelve months – September 2016 to September 2017 – overall economic activity, measured by e−forecasting.com's monthly US GDP – rose by 2.2%. Over the same period, economic activity in US Hotels, measured by HIP, increased by 1%.", said Maria Sogard, CEO of e­forecasting.com.

Only one of the three demand and supply indicators of current business activity that make up Hotel Industry's Pulse (HIP) Index had a positive contribution to its change in September: Total Spending on Hotels (includes non-room revenues). The two of the three indicators of current business activity which had a negative or zero contribution to HIP's change in September were Hotel Jobs and Hotel Capacity.

"The probability of the hotel industry being in recession, which is detected in real-time from HIP with the help of sophisticated statistical techniques, registered 34.1 % in September, up from 30.1% reported in August," said Evangelos Otto Simos, Professor at the University of New Hampshire and Predictive Analytics Database Editor for e-forecasting.com. "When this recession-warning gauge is near or passes the threshold probability of 50%, the US hotel industry has entered a recession," Evangelos added.

About HIP The Hotel Industry Pulse, or HIP for short, is a hotel industry indicator that was created to fill the void of a real-time monthly indicator for the hotel industry that captures current conditions. The indicator provides useful information about the timing and degree of the industry’s link with the US business cycle for the last four decades. Simply put, it tracks monthly overall business conditions in the industry, like an industry GDP, and points in a timely way to the changes in direction from growth to recession or vice versa. The composite indicator is made with the following components: revenues from consumers staying at hotels and motels adjusted for inflation, room occupancy rate and hotel employment, along with other key economic factors which influence hotel business activity.