Hotel rooms in New York cost more than $300 a night on average, as many hotels cater exclusively to migrants, reducing supply during a tourism boom.

• In 2023, hotel rooms in New York cost an average of $301 a night – a record – according to the New York Times.

• Airbnb and inflation are to blame. But the migrant crisis has also played an important role.

• Dozens of hotels have been transformed into migrant shelters, reducing the supply of available rooms.

For travelers planning a trip to New York, be prepared to shell out more money than ever before for a hotel.

In 2023, the average daily cost of a hotel room in New York was $301 per night, up from about $278 per night in 2022, according to commercial and residential real estate provider CoStar. And from January to March 2024, the average nightly rate in the city was about $231, compared to $216 per night during the same period last year.

But it’s not just the increase in travel to New York that’s driving up prices. There’s the disruption of the Airbnb rental market, inflation and the slowdown in new hotel construction.

And as the New York Times recently reported, the migrant crisis has also caused hotel rates to rise. Many hotels began welcoming migrants during the pandemic, some of them exclusively.

This reduced the supply of available rooms and helped drive up prices for guests looking for accommodation throughout the city. According to the Times, about 135 of New York’s approximately 700 hotels now house asylum seekers. These hotels earn up to $185 per night per room, depending on the city.

No hotel that has decided to house migrants has yet reverted to a conventional hotel, the Times reported.

According to CoStar data, hotels now welcoming migrants have blocked approximately 16,500 rooms of available hotel supply, resulting in nearly 122,000 rooms available for travelers. There are now about 2,800 fewer rooms available for travelers in the city compared to just before the coronavirus pandemic.

“During peak periods, try to find a hotel on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday night in midtown Manhattan and, if you can, you might end up paying a lot,” said the LW president and CEO Hospitality Advisors, Daniel H. Lesser, at The Times. “It’s all about supply and demand, and migrant rooms have reduced supply.”

Immigration has become a defining issue in the 2024 presidential campaign. Voters largely disapprove of how President Joe Biden has handled the issue. Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, is seeking to use immigration to rally Republicans and independents around his campaign.

Since 2022, more than 180,000 migrants have arrived in New York, including tens of thousands sent by Texas Governor Greg Abbott to protest Biden’s immigration policies. Mayor Eric Adams faced enormous financial and logistical challenges in housing the migrants.

New York’s hotel market was hit hard in 2020 by plummeting business travel, and the city – once the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic – has struggled to recover due to the economic fallout. resulted.

But the city’s hotel market recovered significantly last year, and the city could see its hotel revenue increase by $380 million this year, according to the Wall Street Journal. If the projections prove accurate, it would be a stunning turnaround given the challenges the travel industry is facing throughout the pandemic.

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