Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index falls 8.9 percent during June

The Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index ended June at 1757, an 8.9-percent decrease for the month and a 9.6-percent increase for year-to-date 2010. The Index ended 2009 at 1603. For the second quarter of 2010, the Index fell 9.7 percent to 1757 after closing the first quarter at 1945.

The data points reflect a historical recharacterization of the Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index that occurred on 1 July 2010.

Robert W. Baird & Co. (Baird) and STR partnered to create the Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index—the first widely available U.S. hotel stock index in the industry. The index combines Baird’s financial markets expertise, the data processing of STR and the industry’s leading news website, HotelNewsNow.com.

“The June performance of the Hotel Stock Index demonstrates how volatile the U.S. economy remains,” said Randy Smith, STR’s CEO. “It is an indicator that while the economic recovery for the hotel industry is under way, it will be a bumpy ride at times. It is important for the industry to understand that this recovery is not going to happen overnight. It’s going to be a gradual recovery with plenty of starts and stops along the way.”

“Perhaps what's most interesting about last month is that the stocks are rolling over in the face of nicely improving RevPAR trends,” said David Loeb, managing director of Baird’s hotel research platform. “The market is generally much more focused on macro concerns, including Europe or the possibility of a double-dip recession, rather than the current fundamentals of the hotel business."

About the Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index

The Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index was set to equal 1000 on 1 January 2000, as its starting point. The Index reached its peak of 3178 on 5 July 2007. The Index’s lowest point occurred on 6 March 2009, when it dropped to 573.

The Index is available exclusively on www.hotelstockindex.com and www.HotelNewsNow.com. The Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index is a co-branded index created by Robert W. Baird & Co. (Baird) and Smith Travel Research, Inc. (STR). The market-cap weighted Index is comprised of 15 of the largest market capitalization hotel companies publicly traded on a U.S. exchange and attempts to characterize the performance of hotel stocks. The Index is maintained by Baird and is hosted on HotelNewsNow.com. The Index is not actively managed and a direct investment cannot be made in it.

The current companies that comprise the Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index: Ashford Hospitality Trust, Choice Hotels International, DiamondRock Hospitality, FelCor Lodging Trust, Hersha Hospitality Trust, Hospitality Properties Trust, Host Hotels & Resorts, Hyatt Hotels, InterContinental Hotels Group, LaSalle Hotel Properties, Marriott International, Orient-Express Hotels, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Sunstone Hotel Investors and Wyndham Worldwide.

About STR | STR (www.str.com) provides clients-including hotel operators, developers, financiers, analysts and suppliers to the hotel industry-access to hotel research with regular and custom reports covering the United State, Canada, Mexico and Caribbean. STR provides a single source of global hotel data covering daily and monthly performance data, forecasts, annual profitability, pipeline and census information. STR founded the STR family of companies and is proudly associated with STR Global, RRC Associates, STR Analytics, and HotelNewsNow.com. STR also founded the Hotel Data Conference (www.Hoteldataconference.com).