Lodging executives and owners said conversions have been a key driver of growth coming out of the pandemic since lenders are reluctant to finance new hotels.

There were roughly 612,000 hotel rooms in the active development pipeline at the end of last year, down 2.6% from the year before and 6.1% lower than in 2019. The number of projects entering the pipeline is also falling: About 15.6% fewer rooms were in the planning phase at the end of 2022 compared with a year prior.

The average 30-year home loan rate has come down by just about a full percentage point from a 20-year high above 7% in November with mortgage applications up by about a quarter since the end of last year.

Despite strong RevPAR growth, GOP margins have declined for the sixth straight month due to the reopening of amenities and the impact of inflation.

Home prices declined in November from the prior month as higher mortgage-interest rates made home purchases less affordable for home buyers. The National Home Price Index fell 0.6% in November compared with October, the fifth straight month-over-month decline.

Field & Stream Lodge Co. will operate hotels around national parks, woods, ski mountains, lakes and desert land across the U.S. It is aimed at families and outdoor enthusiasts. Starwood Capital Group and AJ Capital Partners say they are targeting 125 U.S. markets.

Over the past 96 years, the returns for small-capitalization stocks starting in May of a midterm year through the same October averaged negative 2.3%. The return over the following six months has been positive 19.2%.

The latest forecast for the U.S. hotel industry indicates that real, inflation-adjusted revenue per available room will not fully recover until 2025, despite RevPAR on a nominal basis recovering to pre-pandemic levels in 2022.

The top-earning 10% of men in the U.S. labor market logged 77 fewer work hours in 2022, on average, than those in the same earnings group in 2019. That translates to 1.5 hours less time on the job each workweek, or a 3% reduction in hours. Over the same three-year period, the top-earning 10% of women cut back time at work by 29 hours, which translates to about half an hour less work each week, or a 1% reduction.

Investors have added about $135 billion to global money-market funds over the past four weeks. That is the best stretch since the four-week period ended May 2020, when those funds logged roughly $175 billion in net inflows.