Hotel Statistics

Good afternoon:

Newbie Jan here.

I would like to offer statistics to the hotel page

- number of hotels in the US: 48,800 as of June 2006

- number of rooms in the us: 4.5 million as of June 2006

- total rooms revenue in the US In 2005: $94 billion

- total revenue generated by US hotels in 2005: $122 billion

- etc, etc.

These stats are prepared by smithtravelresearch.com - my employer. We are the leading research authority for hotels in the US.

So, can I post these numbers? Appreciate any guidance.

Jan Freitag, VP [email addres redacted per policy]

Jan, my apologies for accidentally removing your comment (which has been restored). Due to an browser error on my part, I thought it had been added to the article, not this talk page. While statistics are of value in general to Wikipedia, the guidelines on reliable sources prefer facts and figures to come from verifiable, publicly-accessible sources like well-known reference books and sites, the mass media, official sources, established industry groups. If these are part of a widely-distributed, publicly-available annual report or the equivalent, they might meet the reliable source guideline. What do others think? --MCB 01:26, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks MCB: I understand your point.

Question from me then is: We are the primary resource of this info and make the data above available for free here: http://www.smithtravelresearch.com/SmithTravelResearch/News/FindNewsArticle.aspx?article=24564 (opens in .PDF) which then gets picked up by a wide variety of news media (AP, Reuters, trade press) - which I guess you count as secondary sources. The data cannot be independently verified, since we are the only ones who produce it (no ones else cares to count hotels, it is quite a tedious process as you can imagine). Having said that, everyone on the hotel industry uses our data as fact, which is why I thought I'd share them here.