Wealthy travellers are splurging on luxury hotels like never before

Luxury-room prices have defied a drop-off in foreign tourists to the U.S. and a job slump among white-collar workers. Affluent travelers, made wealthier in recent years by stock-market rallies and real-estate gains, have splurged on their stays with abandon.

The wealthy traveler “seems to be making choices based on, ‘I want this when I want it, and I’m willing to pay for it,’" said Jan Freitag, national director for hospitality-market analytics at data firm CoStar.

The average daily room rate at a U.S. luxury hotel is a record high at $394 this year. It is also $168 more than the average cost for a room in the next-priciest tier, according to CoStar. The divide has been widening since 2008, when the difference was $60, but it has grown sharply in recent years to its largest ever.

Higher room rates did little to dull demand for oceanside resorts, exclusive mountaintop inns and city-center grand hotels. Bookings for luxury properties were up 2.5% this year through September, according to CoStar. Demand for lower-scale and midtier hotels, by contrast, was slightly lower than last year for that period.

New Orleans resident Gene Dry took four trips this year, including a 10-day vacation in the southern Italian region of Puglia with his wife to celebrate their 30th anniversary last month.

“Some people have fishing camps, big boats," said Dry, who owns a cloud-communications company. “We like to travel."

The seemingly unshakable demand for luxury travel is prompting high-end hoteliers like Montage International to expand. The company, which owns 15 hotels under the Montage and Pendry brands, plans to double in size over the next three to five years, said Chief Executive Alan Fuerstman.

Much of Montage’s expansion will happen overseas, but the company expects most of its guests will be American. Revenue this year is up 8% year over year, and groups are booking 2026 travel at a stronger pace than previous years, Fuerstman said.

The higher up the luxury ladder, the steeper the price gains. The daily room rate of the 10 most expensive hotels in major markets worldwide is often more than double the typical luxury hotel, said Freitag. He calls this group ultraluxury.

In Paris, where a luxury room runs nearly $1,000 a night, the average price at the most expensive hotels is $2,600. In New York, ultraluxury hotels cost $1,560 a night compared with the average luxury-room rate of $472, according to CoStar.

“Thank God for luxury and ultraluxury," said Albert Herrera, an executive vice president at the travel-services company Internova Travel Group. “That’s what’s keeping our business thriving."

Having already accumulated a stash of fancy cars and watches, wealthy Americans today are spending even more on experiences, including travel. Multigenerational trips are more popular than in the past, with grandparents paying for accommodations large enough to include their children and grandchildren.

“They don’t want the two-bedroom suite," Herrera said. “They want the villa. They want the yacht."

Trade policy, global economic uncertainty and the increased cost-of-living have started to pressure room rates for some luxury hoteliers, including Corinthia Hotels, which owns a dozen properties and manages an additional five. Profitability, in turn, is flat year-over-year across the portfolio, said CEO Simon Casson.

But the U.S. is bucking that trend. Corinthia’s Surrey hotel, which reopened a year ago on Manhattan’s Upper East Side after an extensive renovation, is currently charging more than $2,000 a night, with a two-night minimum, for weekends in December.

The hotel’s 100 rooms offer personalized butler services and deep-soak bathtubs. The hotel’s restaurant, the high-end Italian eatery Casa Tua, includes a private members’ club.

Corinthia staff are trained to open the car door within 15 seconds of it arriving at the curb, pick up the front-desk phone after no more than three rings and address guests by name.

“Employees who anticipate, who go out of the way to meet a need," said Casson. “That directly translates into rates."

Write to Kate King at kate.king@wsj.com