Orange County Business Journal
01/09/18

OC Hotel Development Down in 2017
By Paul Hughes

http://www.ocbj.com/news/2018/jan/09/oc-hotel-development-down-2017/

Fewer and smaller hotels opened in Orange County last year, Atlas Hospitality Group in Irvine said.

Six hotels with 960 rooms opened in OC in 2017, a room count a little more than half of 2016’s total of 1,808 rooms at seven hotels. The per-hotel average in 2017 was 160, compared with an average 258 rooms apiece at hotels opened in 2016.

2017’s average was boosted by the year’s largest opening, the 271-room Marriott Irvine Spectrum, by Newport Beach’s R.D. Olson Development.

OC has eight hotels with 1,657 rooms under construction; the uptick in average room count to 207 is thrown off a bit by the gorilla at the construction site, Westin Anaheim Resort, the 613-room Wincome Group project near Anaheim Convention Center that broke ground in September.

Los Angeles and Riverside counties saw increases in new hotel rooms in 2017, year-over-year; San Diego’s new room count declined slightly.

All four counties had more projects in planning—70,000 rooms at 410 hotels—at year-end than they did 12 months earlier.

OC’s take of that total: 57 hotels with about 11,200 rooms.