STR, Inc

STR

Type	Private
Industry	Hotel
Founded	1985
Founders	Randy and Carolyn Smith
Headquarters	Hendersonville, Tennessee United States
Area served	Worldwide
Number of employees	200
Website	www.str.com

STR, formerly known as Smith Travel Research, is an American company based in Hendersonville, Tennessee, that tracks supply and demand data for multiple market sectors, including the global hotel industry. STR provides market share analysis for major hotel chains and brands in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. STR maintains a presence in 10 countries around the world with a corporate North American headquarters in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and an international headquarters in London, England.

STR was founded in 1985 by Randell A. Smith and his wife Carolyn Smith in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The Smiths built the company with a focus on providing overall performance data and trends to the hotel industry. In the beginning, they developed a database with names, addresses and phone numbers of established hotel companies in the United States to create the Census Database. Randy Smith was contacted by Holiday Inn multiple times and urged to create a market share report. By 1988, the company launched the first Smith Travel Accommodations Report (STAR), a monthly report that includes data from hotels and measures each property’s market share performance against a self-selected competitive set.

STR currently tracks more than 50,000 hotels with over 6.8 million rooms.

In 2008, as STR sought to expand its services to markets outside the US, HotelBenchmark, a division of Deloitte UK, and The Bench, a daily benchmarking company, combined businesses to form STR Global. STR continues serving the North American markets, while STR Global caters to a global audience.

STR Global's main office is in London, with regional offices in Italy, Dubai, Brazil, Singapore, Tokyo, Jakarta, Sydney and Beijing.