But have you ever wondered how many hotels there actually are?

On the tenth anniversary of the launch of its international expansion, STR has gone some way to answering the question.

The global data provider reports that there are 184,299 hotels comprising 16,966,280 million rooms around the world.

That number of rooms represents a 17.7 per cent increase over the last ten years.

However, there are some criteria to be considered.

STR defines a hotel on three exclusionary criteria: a) it generates revenue on a nightly per-room basis, b) has ten or more rooms and c) is open to the public (excludes those properties requiring membership, affiliation or club status).

Founded in 1985, STR expanded its benchmarking and analytics platform to markets outside of North America and the Caribbean in 2008.

The company maintains the world’s largest global hotel performance sample, receiving data from more than 59,000 hotels comprising nearly eight million hotel rooms.

“The hotel sector and its rate of return continue to attract real-estate investors - that is evident through the substantial growth in performance metrics and development we have seen over the past decade,” said Robin Rossmann, STR international managing director.

“While the story is rarely the same for any two markets around the world, the industry as a whole continues to perform at robust levels, and we expect continued growth over the coming years.”

Since the launch of its international business (formerly STR Global), STR’s hotel sample has grown by almost three million rooms (up 49 per cent).

Based on that sample, the global hotel industry recorded an average occupancy level of 67.5 per cent for the 12 months ending with February 2018, which was a 1.6 per cent increase from the previous 12 months.

Average daily rate grew 2.6 per cent during that 12-month time period to US$122.96.