Marriott hotel revenue down 17 percent: CFO

By Deena Beasley

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Room revenue at Marriott International Inc (MAR.N) is running 17 percent below year-ago levels, at the lower end of the hotel operator's recent forecast, according to Chief Financial Officer Arne Sorenson.

"I would not expect pronounced improvement in demand until we see improvement in the economy," he said at the Reuters Travel and Leisure Summit in New York.

He said Marriott is less confident today about its ability to know what the future is going bring than at any time in recent memory.

The company forecast last month that its revenue per available room, a key metric of hotel industry business, would fall by 12 percent to 17 percent in 2009.

"The longer demand stays weak, the more pressure there will be on (room) rates," Sorenson said. "There are lots and lots of rooms out there being priced by smaller players. We have to compete with that on some level."

He said that during the last months of 2008 and heading into 2009, Marriott has seen fewer new commitments for group bookings than in the past.

"In this environment, we would certainly expect to see and have seen already some higher attrition levels than in the past," Sorenson said.

He said the best-performing hotels are those that had significant group business booked before the economy turned sour.