U.S. market cooling, says Marriott

The company cites a "normalization" in domestic U.S. vacation bookings, a potential warning sign for the post-pandemic travel frenzy

Marriott raised its forecast for 2024 profitability on Wednesday after predicting continued travel demand worldwide. But analysts spent the earnings call focused on travel booking behavior in the U.S., where post-pandemic domestic demand may be cooling.

Key takeaways

• The company now expects higher year-over-year RevPAR growth in Asia Pacific, Europe and the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Latin America, and lower levels of RevPAR growth in the U.S., Canada, and Greater China;
• Hotel-level profits at the U.S. properties Marriott manages were sluggish. In the first quarter, U.S. and Canadian hotels saw their RevPAR rise only 1.5% year-over-year;
• One complicating factor is that many Americans continue to travel abroad. So Americans may still travel in larger numbers this year than they did before the pandemic, just not as much domestically as in 2021.

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