Competition among US hotel brands: Marriott takes the lead in the RevPAR index for the first time as occupancy narrows the pricing gap
Bernstein’s 2026 comparison of hotels in the same locations shows that Marriott commands the strongest room-rate premium, but Hilton and Hyatt are close behind thanks to occupancy. InterContinental Hotels Group lags overall, although its brands are not uniformly weakening. Whether a brand can charge more and fill its rooms matters for owner returns and future expansion.
Original source：BernsteinFirst published on Unhidea：Original source date：
Key takeaway
Marriott’s relative operating advantage is strengthening, but occupancy and the convergence of prices as check-in approaches substantially narrow the extent to which its room-rate premium translates into a RevPAR advantage.
Marriott tops the ranking for the first time: how large is its lead?
Marriott surpassed Hilton for the first time in Bernstein’s 2026 relative RevPAR index. Marriott has improved steadily since 2021, while Hilton has edged down from 2024, changing their competitive positions.
Marriott’s average room-rate index is 103, meaning its average quoted rate is about 3% higher than that of competing hotels in the same location and category. But after occupancy is included, the RevPAR indices for Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt are 101.6, 101.2 and 100.7, respectively, a spread of just 0.9 points. The latter two offset a substantial part of their room-rate disadvantage with higher occupancy.
What kind of competitive strength does this index measure?
The study covers more than 7,000 US hotels. It identifies brands competing for similar customers within the same ZIP code, compares forward quotes for entry-level rooms, and combines them with brand-disclosed occupancy rates to estimate RevPAR, or revenue per available room. The index uses 100, the average for comparable local hotels, as its benchmark and focuses on identifying relative brand strength.
The quotes and occupancy rates are combined estimates, not actual transaction revenue for individual hotels. A more direct constraint is booking timing: Marriott’s premium is more pronounced for stays more than three months away, while group quotes converge as check-in approaches. The average booking window for most asset-light hotel groups is only 2–3 weeks, so forward quotes may overstate Marriott’s actual price advantage.
InterContinental lags: are all its brands uncompetitive?
InterContinental Hotels Group’s RevPAR index is 96.6, well below the other three. The drag is concentrated in brands weak on both price and occupancy: Holiday Inn’s occupancy is nearly 5 percentage points lower than Courtyard’s, the next-lowest in the group, and its RevPAR index is more than 10% below the group’s top three brands.
Crowne Plaza’s gap likewise comes from both sides: Hilton’s DoubleTree quotes are about 8% higher and its occupancy is nearly 10 percentage points higher, resulting in a RevPAR index advantage of more than 20%. This shows that lower quotes have not generated enough occupancy to compensate.
The group ranking also masks improvements. Holiday Inn Express has narrowed its RevPAR gap with Hampton since 2024; extended-stay brand Staybridge performs close to Residence Inn and Homewood; and Avid’s index gap with Tru has narrowed from 24 points in 2024 to 15 points.
How does brand performance translate into group growth?
Bernstein’s reasoning is that better relative RevPAR improves hotel owner returns, strengthens developers’ incentive to choose the brand and, in turn, drives net room growth. For asset-light groups, new hotels are an important source of high-margin growth with relatively little incremental investment.
This relationship is consistent with the US development pipeline: rooms in Marriott’s pipeline represent 21% of its existing supply, compared with 18.9% for Hilton and 15.2% for InterContinental. However, Marriott’s ratio has merely remained level since 2024; its improved RevPAR ranking has not yet been accompanied by a rise in the pipeline ratio. Construction progress also constrains the conversion of development projects into new rooms, and Bernstein lists a construction slowdown as a risk to Marriott’s growth.
