As for every semester, THRENDS issues the update on Hotel Chains in Italy through our Chains Monitor Italy, which tracks new affiliations to domestic and/or international chains and recent exits, along with hotel pipeline for the next 3 years.

In the second half of 2023, there were approximately 63 new affiliations, 54% of which belonging to the upscale segment. Similarly, there were 63 hotels that “disaffiliated” from a chain during the six-month period, most of them also belonging to the upscale segment (69%) and to a domestic chain (86%).

In the coming years (2024 – 2027), there are approximately 232 development and/or affiliation projects, most of them belonging to the luxury segment (40%) and 68% of the total belonging to international groups.

Most precisely, this pipeline includes:

-5 hotels in the economy segment;
-35 hotels in the midscale segment;
-83 hotels in the upscale segment;
-93 hotels in the luxury segment;
-and 16 hotels under development whose segment is currently unknown.

32% of new projects involve domestic groups while the remaining 68% are international openings/affiliations: the majority are American (32%), French (16%) and Spanish (8%) hotel chains.

The regions that will witness the highest number of new openings are Lombardy (21%), Lazio (20%), Veneto (12%) and Tuscany (9%), while the top 5 destinations are Rome (18%), Milan (10%), Venice (6%), Florence (6%) and Naples (3%).

Most of the projects will be located in art cities (39%), leisure (22%), sun & beach (15%) and business (11%) destinations.

As of H2 2023, there are 2,189 chain hotels (216k rooms) in Italy. In H2 2023 only, additional 63 hotels were opened. The rooms offered by chain hotels increased yearly since 2013, demonstrating an impressive growth of +48% (2023 vs 2013).

However, as of today, Italy remains one of the European countries with the lowest chain penetration rate (CPR): 20.1% (by chain rooms) and 6.8% (by chain hotels).

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