Community Impact Houston: New boutique hotels emerge as Houston tourism rebounds

Community Impact Houston reached out to the Source Strategies team for context on the boutique hotel trends in recent years. Reporter Roo Moody profiled hotels like the Hotel St. Augustine, Hotel Daphne and The Marlene with additional insights from Source Strategies in the article New boutique hotels emerge as Houston tourism rebounds.

The Heights, Montrose and River Oaks areas have seen a rise in neighborhood boutique hotels opening in 2025. The openings coincide with Houston reaching a record number of 54 million visitors in 2024, according to the Houston First Corp.

Source Strategies Director of Data Operations helped to explain the boutique trend:

Paul Vaughn, the director of data operations at Source Strategies, a company that tracks and measures Texas hotel data and analytics, also noted the rise in popularity of boutique hotels.

“This is a trend that we have seen coming up in the last decade, basically, where travelers are wanting a more localized, experiential stay when they go somewhere,” he said.

Source’s Todd Walker provided additional information regarding the Houston Metro lodging market:

Following the rise in occupancy and RevPAR, a hotel performance metric that calculates the revenue per available room, the cost of hotel stays has declined since 2024.

According to Todd Walker, director of feasibility and analytics at Source Strategies, nearly 1,500 rooms are under construction in the metro. He said these rooms will keep occupancy lower as there will be more rooms to fill the demand.

Read the full article, New boutique hotels emerge as Houston tourism rebounds, on the Community Impact website.