U.S hotel room prices rose during the first half of 2012, led by California and Hawaii

The West Coast is on the rise in popularity and average hotel prices reflect this trend as revealed in the latest data from the Hotels.com Hotel Price Index™ (HPI®). When comparing 10 major cities on each coast, Hotels.com found that West Coast cities saw an average hotel price increase of 8.6 percent compared to the 4.4 percent of those on the East Coast.

The HPI tracks real prices paid per room by Hotels.com customers at approximately 140,000 properties within the Hotels.com network in major destinations around the world. This edition of the report, which compares the first six months of 2012 with the same period in 2011, shows an upward trend in hotel prices across all global regions, resulting in an average global increase of 4 percent. This is the first time in five years that Hotels.com has seen an increase across the globe.