Europe’s Hotel Construction Pipeline Continues an Upward Trend Despite Some Economic Challenges

According to the recent Europe hotel construction pipeline trend report from Lodging Econometrics (LE), Europe’s total construction pipeline rose to 1,871 projects/297,490 rooms in the fourth quarter of 2019, a 19% increase by projects and 22% by rooms, year-over-year (YOY).

There are 879 projects/140,620 rooms currently under construction, 531 projects/81,235 rooms scheduled to start construction in the next 12 months, and 461 projects/75,635 rooms in early planning. All stages of the pipeline are at record highs and have counts more than double their cyclical lows set earlier in the decade.

Looking forward, the first quarter of 2020 could be rather sluggish too, due in part to the heavily export-dependent German economy, which is being negatively affected by the slowing of the Chinese economy as a result of the coronavirus, France’s weakening economic performance and widespread social turmoil caused by unpopular economic reforms, and the U.K.’s need to reestablish an economic relationship with the European Union by year’s end.

Europe’s leading countries in the construction pipeline are the United Kingdom with 346 projects/49,651 rooms, and Germany standing at 339 projects/61,836 rooms. France follows with 171 projects/21,173 rooms, and then Portugal and Poland with 118 projects/12,616 rooms and 90 projects/14,028 rooms, respectively. With the exception of France and Poland, these markets all have construction pipelines at record highs

The cities with the largest pipelines are London with 88 projects/15,575 rooms, Dusseldorf at an all-time high of 60 projects/11,443 rooms, Paris with 44 projects/6,896 rooms, Hamburg standing at 34 projects/7,302 rooms, and Lisbon with 34 projects/3,114 rooms. Moscow follows with 31 projects/6,536 rooms, Berlin with 27 projects/6,202 rooms, and then Frankfurt with 27 projects/5,642 rooms.