MARRIOTT ADDED MORE ROOMS THAN HILTON IN 2024 . DOES IT MATTER ?

By DAVID EISEN

t ’ s a battle of room additions — by any means necessary .

As lodging companies readily transfer their ownership and management duties to embracing a fee-based model focused on franchising , one thing matters most : multiplication . Put simply , adding more rooms in the shortest amount of time and , thusly , being rewarded by Wall Street .

Marriott International showed off in 2024 , adding 123,000 rooms — bringing its global room count to more than 1.7 million rooms — and producing net unit growth of 6.8 %. At the end of the year , Marriott ’ s worldwide development pipeline totaled nearly 3,800 properties and more than 577,000 rooms . By contrast , Hilton said it added just shy of 100,000 rooms in 2024 ( a record ) and produced net unit growth of 7.3 %. Its development pipeline stood at 498,600 rooms . It turns out , the absolute number of rooms is more of

a trophy status . Analysts and investors are more focused on the growth rate percentage , with Hilton eclipsing Marriott ’ s growth rate by 5 percentage points .

Often in this higher-interestrate environment , more room additions mean more property conversions , as new development remains stunted , something Tony Capuano , president and CEO of Marriott International , noted on his company ’ s fourth-quarter and full-year 2024 earnings call . “ Conversions were again a large driver of growth in 2024 , contributing to about a third of our signings and over half of our openings ,” he said , citing the addition of around 38,000 rooms from its agreement with MGM and approximately 9,000 rooms from Sonder .

As Michael Bellisario , managing director and senior research analyst for hotels , global

60 hotelsmag . com Mar / Apr 2025