Source: The Knowland Group

ARLINGTON, Va.Knowland, the world’s leading provider of data-as-a-service insights on meetings and events for hospitality, released the quarterly update to its U.S. Meetings Recovery Forecast (MRF) and associated Top 25 U.S. Meetings Recovery Forecast (MRF25) realizing strong performance ending 2022 on a high note and shifting 2023 higher than the Q3 forecast. Click here to view the most current forecasts.

The fourth quarter outperformed the Knowland forecast by 8.4 percent, driven by top market growth. Additionally, both November and December exceeded 2019 numbers. This is the first time this has happened since the pandemic began. 2023 is poised to be a growth year, and hotels should be focused on optimizing demand and profitability. Kristi White, chief product officer, Knowland

Knowland’s forecasts provide an overview of how the U.S. as a whole and the Top 25 Markets, specifically, will move through recovery. A breakdown of the details is below:

  • U.S. Markets Recovery Forecast update – 2022 outperformed in Q4, raising the year-end capture to 77.8 percent from the October 2022 forecast of 73.1 percent recovery. Compared to 2019, the updated 2023 and 2024 forecasts are:
    • 2023 Recovery Forecast: 110.2 percent (106.4 percent in October forecast)
    • 2024 Recovery Forecast: 133.3 percent (129.2 percent in October forecast)
  • Top 25 Markets Recovery Forecast update – Four markets (Dallas, Nashville, Phoenix, and Tampa) ended 2022 fully recovered to 2019 levels. Twelve markets outperformed the October forecast, including Anaheim, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Oahu Island, Orlando, San Diego, Seattle, and St. Louis.
    • Recovery by the end of 2023: Thirteen markets are forecasted to achieve full recovery: Anaheim, Atlanta, Denver, Houston, Miami, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Oahu Island, Orlando, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and St. Louis. Four markets (Boston, Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York) will end the year between 90 and 100 percent. The remaining four markets (Chicago, Las Vegas Philadelphia, and Washington, DC) will be under 90 percent.
    • Back to normal in 2024: All but two markets (Boston and Chicago) will be back to normal growth.

Knowland hosts a webinar featuring the final roll-up of 2022 recovery data as well as the forecast for 2023 today at 1:00PM ET. Register here.

Knowland will continue to host quarterly webinars reporting on the state of the industry, highlighting regional trends and booking disruptors.

About the MRF and associated MRF25: The MRF demonstrates projected industry recovery patterns and is based on Knowland’s proprietary data and regression models leveraging almost 20 million global events over the last 15 years. The MRF25 was added in February 2022 to provide the capability to search industry recovery patterns for the Top 25 U.S. Markets. The forecast uses a natural recovery model, assuming historic seasonal patterns without major market disruption, to index the recapture of meeting activity compared to baseline levels from 2019. By comparing past data to evolving data trends, hoteliers can better understand market-relevant changes–and their implications–as individual markets move into 2022 and beyond.

Top 25 Markets: Anaheim, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, New York, Oahu Island, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa, and Washington DC.

About Knowland

Celebrating its 20th year in 2024, Knowland is the world's leading provider of data-as-a-service insights on meetings and events for hospitality. With the industry's largest historical database of actualized events, thousands of customers trust Knowland to sell group smarter and maximize their revenue. Knowland operates globally and is headquartered just outside Washington, DC. To learn more about our solutions, visit www.knowland.com or follow us on X @knowlandgroup.

Katrina Pruitt-Andrews
Vice President, Marketing KNOWLAND