Honolulu surpasses New York City for most expensive hotel rooms in US

Aloha, and welcome to the most expensive hotels in America.

At $230 a night on average, Honolulu has now become the most expensive hotel market in the county, according to Hotel.com’s most recent Hotel Price Index report.

The report tracked the prices that some 155,000 of the site’s users paid for hotel rooms at major destinations around the nation – and world.

This year, for the first time since the creation of the index report in 2004, Honolulu has surpassed New York City as the most expensive hotel room market in the country. New York City is still close behind with an average nightly rate of $211, but the city experienced only a 2 percent increase in prices last year, as opposed to Honolulu's whopping 13 percent jump.

While Honolulu is the country’s most expensive designated market area (or DMA in industry parlance) to find a hotel, it is not the most expensive city. When evaluating hotel room cost by city, Newport Coast, Calif. blew both Honolulu and New York City out of the water with an average daily rate of $501, which was a 25 percent increase from last year.

It turns out the five-star beaches of Newport Coast far surpass Honolulu’s beaches when it comes to nightly hotel room rates.

Overall, hotel prices in North America were three percent higher on average during the first six months of 2013 than they were during the same period last year. And the average price of a hotel room has risen two percent globally, over the same period, with Latin America seeing a whopping seven percent increase.