Hotel market even more active than projected

After hotel transactions in the Americas shot up by 30 percent to $24 billion in 2013 — the highest since 2007 — the market was forecast to grow even more in 2014, with Jones Lang LaSalle projecting a further 15 percent growth in transaction volume across the Americas to $28 billion, which would qualify as the third most active year on record.

Four and a half months into 2014, it looks like even those projections could be short. In the United States alone, significant hotel transactions totaled $7.1 billion in first quarter 2014, a year-over-year growth of 23 percent and the most active first quarter since 2007, according to Real Capital Analytics. This would put the United States alone on a pace to exceed projected transaction volumes for all of the Americas, showing that Americans are traveling again and the econ