Midland Texas Hotels--Why so Expensive?
 

I've been traveling to Midland Texas every couple months for business and am always shocked how high the rates are for hotels that, relatively speaking, are in the middle of Nowhere. Your basic Fairfield or Hampton Inn (there really are no upscale properties that I've found) runs $300 per night when you factor in taxes. This seems inexplicable to me. Can anyone shed light on this?:confused:

Please follow this thread in the FT Texas Forum.
Thanks..
Obscure2k
TravelBuzz Moderator

Oil and gas drilling brings in a lot of transient personnel. They stay in hotels in many cases. I am sure the RV parks are worse.

A friend of mine who works for a restaurant chain was transferred there recently. He said that they were paying waitstaff $18 an hour plus tips and could not keep people. He also remarked about how high the hotels and rents were.

As others have said....it is a price gouging market spike because of drilling.

Many live in hotels because they cant find housing. They negotiate a monthly rate at a lower amount but the hotel has to make this up by charging alot more for poeple actually in town for a few nights.

Similar thing is happening up in North Dakota where you have had an influx of people looking for jobs in oil/gas but the housing structure isnt there to support the work force. Thus the need to live in hotels or RVs/mobile homes.

Because of the spike in rent people cant afford to live there which is then driving wages and forcing some long term residents out of their homes because of real estate increases...thus property taxes are higher or they were on a long term fixed rent that home owners are now looking to play in the market and price spike it.


Housing/rent costs is what drives the local wages. If you cant pay enough for people to live and work there they will leave or they will look for the better paying job and take it.

Same thing in the pithole of Rawlins, Wyoming. Amazing hotel prices. Oil/gas service trucks and personnel everywhere.

Midland is a "Managers/Executives/Owners" market, unlike Bluer collared Odessa just down the road. Between the visiting bankers and lawyers, all traveling on someone else's cuff, everything costs more. Then there's drilling activity, high in the Permian Basin. Check the Odessa rates, especially for some of the low-end and non-branded properties. You may be scared of the roughnecks staying on either side of you, but they rarely start fights before noon.

Midland or Odessa you are going to shell out around $200+ per night. The oilfield is booming and hotels are being thrown up everywhere just trying to keep up.

On a good point, I managed to swing a deal for $116 per night at the DoubleTree Midland for 5 nights!

Yep. Average rents in Wiliston ND for a 700 sq foot apartment are the most expensive in the country, at $2,394/year. Beating out #2 San Jose ($1,881) and San Francisco ($1,776). Dickinson ND, at $1,733 , is higher than Boston ($1,537), NYC ($1,504) or LA ($1,411).

A former boss just moved there and he had to pay $300/square foot for new construction.

Its the new oil boom.

They are also putting up a 50 story, yes 50 story, office building in Midland. It's all because of the oilboom. Absolutely insane.

Wow. That is absolutely nuts.