Above: a rendering of the Baha Mar resort project in New Providence

By the Caribbean Journal staff

The Caribbean-Mexico hotel development pipeline reached 26,557 rooms in January, a 30 percent increase over January 2013, according to a new report from hotel analytics firm STR.

The total rooms in the pipeline represented an 8.5 percent increase over the overall total at the end of 2013, according to STR.

That number, which included 160 hotels overall, also represented a 15.4 percent increase in rooms under construction.

Among what STR called “chain scale” segments, the upper upscale segment posted the largest increase in rooms in the pipeline, with a 114.5 percent jump over last January.

In 2014, a total of 48 hotels comprising 7,974 rooms are set to open their doors in the Caribbean and Mexico.

STR’s pipeline data includes projects in the in construction, final planning and planning stages, but not projects in the pre-planning stage.