A new report from Lodging Econometrics shows that the hotel pipeline in Latin America increased 14% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2011 to 528 projects, representing more than 85,000 rooms.
The development is not spread evenly across the intercontinental region. More than half of the rooms are going to South America, including nearly 30,000 rooms for Brazil, particularly in cities that have been selected to host 2014 World Cup games. These include Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Salvador, Brasilia and Sao Paulo.
In Central America, Panama and Costa Rica dominate the pipeline of 10,674 rooms with 58% and 26% respectively. Mexico’s pipeline continues to suffer as developers and lenders remain spooked by drug violence and the lackluster U.S. economy, as the U.S. is Mexico’s primary source of tourists.