Baird/STR Stock Index Up 3.4% in April

The Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index ended April with a 3.4-percent increase to 2,507, and it is up 23.8-percent year-to-date 2012. The index ended 2011 at 2,025.

The Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index outperformed both the MSCI REIT (RMZ) (+2.7 percent) and the S&P 500 (-0.7 percent) in April.

“While April was only a decent month for the Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index, investor interest continued to be up significantly year to date,” said Randy Smith, chairman and co-founder of STR. “We expect this interest to continue as the industry reports strong performance leading up to the summer travel season.”

“Hotel stocks continued their outperformance in April as better-than-expected first quarter earnings from Marriott International, LaSalle Hotel Properties, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and Host Hotels & Resorts drove stock prices higher. The first wave of strong earnings from these companies set the bar high, and the second set of earnings later in the month and into May, while strong, were met with some skepticism,” said David Loeb, senior hotel research analyst and managing director at Baird. “Management teams expect fundamentals to remain strong for the rest of the year, and acquisitions and capital recycling have a renewed focus given the improvement in equity prices."

About the Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index

The Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index was set to equal 1000 on 1 January 2000, as its starting point. The Index reached its peak of 3178 on 5 July 2007. The Index’s lowest point occurred on 6 March 2009, when it dropped to 573.

The Index is available exclusively on www.hotelstockindex.com and www.HotelNewsNow.com. The Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index is a co-branded index created by Robert W. Baird & Co. (Baird) and Smith Travel Research, Inc. (STR). The market-cap weighted Index is comprised of 15 of the largest market capitalization hotel companies publicly traded on a U.S. exchange and attempts to characterize the performance of hotel stocks. The Index is maintained by Baird and is hosted on HotelNewsNow.com. The Index is not actively managed and a direct investment cannot be made in it.

The current companies that comprise the Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index: Ashford Hospitality Trust, Choice Hotels International, DiamondRock Hospitality, FelCor Lodging Trust, Hersha Hospitality Trust, Hospitality Properties Trust, Host Hotels & Resorts, Hyatt Hotels, InterContinental Hotels Group, LaSalle Hotel Properties, Marriott International, Orient-Express Hotels, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Sunstone Hotel Investors and Wyndham Worldwide.

About STR

STR provides clients—including hotel operators, developers, financiers, analysts and suppliers to the hotel industry—access to hotel research with regular and custom reports covering North America, Mexico and Caribbean. STR provides a single source of global hotel data covering daily and monthly performance data, forecasts, annual profitability, pipeline and census information. STR founded the STR family of companies and is proudly associated with STR Global, RRC Associates, STR Analytics, and HotelNewsNow.com. For more information, please visit www.str.com.


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