Bookings at US hotels ended 2025 down by 9.43% compared with 2024, according to the quarterly index from HotelHub, based on an annual review of the more than 7.5 million hotel bookings made via its technology over the course of the year. This comes following another difficult quarter for the US, marked by ongoing tariff revisions, a weaker dollar and the longest government shutdown in US history.
US domestic bookings took the biggest hit in 2025, according to the report, dropping by 9.73% compared with the previous 12 months, while international bookings were down by 7.56% at the end of the year.
It should be noted, said the report, that, unlike domestic bookings, which were consistently under 2024 levels, international bookings had grown slightly in the first quarter of last year.
These volumes, said the report, began to shrink from April onwards, after the announcement of the new administration’s changes to foreign trade policy. While the rate of decline has fluctuated since then, December saw particularly low international bookings, dropping by 17.44% compared with the same month in 2024.
Of the major inbound markets traveling to the US in 2025, only two saw increased bookings at US hotels: Bookings from India were up by 8.71% by the end of the year, while bookings from Australia grew by 12.15%. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the ongoing rhetoric around Greenland, bookings from Scandinavian countries were hit particularly hard in 2025, with volumes from Finland down by 12.88%, from Denmark down by 19.45% and bookings from Sweden dropping by 23.34%, according to the report.
In contrast, Canada closed the year with total hotel bookings up by 6.14% compared with 2024, following 1.92% growth in the fourth quarter. This increase is even more notable considering that inbound bookings from the US, its closest neighbor and second biggest market, dropped by 18.76% in 2025 compared with the previous 12 months. Instead, the 2025 figures were bolstered by a 12.15% increase in domestic bookings as well as significant growth from the UK (up 1.9%) and Australia (up 24.15%).
When it comes to rates, the fourth quarter of 2025 proved expensive for business travelers, with average nightly rates spiking by 6.27%, contributing to a 3.13% average growth in rates across the full year compared with 2024.
Many European destinations have seen above-inflation rate rises across 2025, despite slight dips in booking volumes. Compared with 2024, average rates rose by 9.5% in Stockholm, 10.21% in Munich and 11.63% in Madrid.
By contrast, US rates dropped nationwide by an average of 1.33%, with some major business destinations seeing significant decreases, including a fall of 2.6% in Los Angeles, 2.62% in Seattle and 5.96% in Washington DC. One US outlier was New York, which has remained in the Top 3 destinations for HotelHub users and finished the year with average nightly rates up by 5.86%.
HotelHub’s chief commercial officer, Paul Raymond, said: “The full dataset for 2025 reflects a volatile year for business dominated by inconsistent US policies — and this new status quo looks unlikely to change given the events of the first few weeks of the year.” However, he continued, “2026 has already seen moves by the UK, Canada and the EU to forge new trade partnerships with countries like China and India, so it will be interesting to see if these efforts have any stabilizing effect in the coming months and what it will mean for business travel around the world.”
Other notable statistics from the report include a slight 1.65% decrease in average length of stay (from 2.47 days in 2024 to 2.43 days in 2025) and a 2.08% increase in average booking lead times (from 16.13 days in 2024 to 16.46 days in 2025).
